Pope on a Rope Tow (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine January 2002

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Pope on a Rope Tow (Cont.)

When Karol Wojtyla was the Bishop, and later Cardinal, of Kraków, he was still a ripper, and he spent two weeks each winter from 1962 to 1978 with the Sisters of St. Ursula Grey in their convent just down the road from Kasprowy. Witold, who has had to deal with nuns a lot over the years, says they are incorrigible gossips. Don't believe anything they say, he advises, but I believe it all anyhow.

The day after our trip up Kasprowy, we comb our hair and knock on the convent door. We are greeted by two nuns, both named Sister Theresa. Sister Theresa No. 1, pleasant and brisk, introduces us to Sister Theresa No. 2, an older woman eager to talk about the pope. ST2 takes us upstairs to view the pope's old lodgings. It's less of a museum than the other museums, but it's still set up exactly as he left it. The desk, chairs, and table have that behind-the-Iron-Curtain institutional look, all blond wood and modular. Standing here, I realize that at this point I've been in more bedrooms belonging to the pope than to any other man.

In the corner is a black-and-white shot of the then-bishop, skis on his shoulder, wool hat pulled down over his ears. He's wearing a nylon jacket with a broken zipper. ST2 tells Witold that the skiing bishop was a fashion disaster—his goggles were outdated, his clothes mismatched. She tells him this confidentially, in Polish, giggling, saying it's not to be translated. Witold immediately translates for me, happy to prove his point about nuns with wagging tongues.

The Tartras are magically deep and hobbit-sultry. When we crack through the cloud layer, rocky snowcapped peaks stretch in every direction.

ST2 is full of dope on the pope, most of which supports my vision of him as a hard-core downhiller. He skied Kasprowy, she says, but preferred the solitude of the Chocholowska Valley, about ten miles to the west. He would drive into the valley, park, climb a mountain, and carve his way to the bottom. "He was critical of skiing as sport," ST2 opines. "And he didn't think taking a cable car up a hill and then going down was sport. The only way he'd go skiing was to carry skis up the mountain and ski down."

Visible through the convent's windows are the slopes of Nosal, a small Zakopane ski hill with poma lifts and a rope tow. ST2 tells me that one night long ago, the bishop arrived at the convent at midnight, couldn't resist the allure of fresh powder, and took off for a run. But then, she adds, he would rarely go into the mountains alone. When I ask why, ST2 explains that to be a prominent Catholic clergyman in a communist country in the midst of the Cold War was dangerous. Police would dress up as sheep in nearby fields as he frolicked, she says. It's hard to tell what she means—were the police masquerading as sheep to spy on him or to protect him?—but I love the idea of fuzzy baaaing cops hunched over in meadows wearing heavy woolen costumes. Witold doesn't believe a word of it.

As we're about to leave, I ask the sisters if they have a pair of the pope's old boards around. No, all his skis are in the museum in Kraków, they say. "We have his boots, though," ST1 offers. She leaves and comes back with a well-worn pair of leather ski boots, laces up both the front and back. She handles these relics lovingly, setting them on a desk for us to admire. The pope, it turns out, has average-size feet.

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