Poland used to be a very religious, Catholic country. It still is, but the level of religiosity is nowhere near what it was in the 20th century. The election of John Paul II as pope was probably the most important event of the entire 20th century for Poles who were alive at the time, including regaining independence and both World Wars. Having a Polish pope was simply something absolutely enormous. There are genuinely people who believe that the collapse of the USSR started with John Paul II becoming pope, and honestly, those arguments aren't even completely unfounded. The Pope definitely played a major role in Poland's turn toward the West.
So for Polish Boomers and Gen X, he was the biggest cultural icon, and a genuine cult developed around him. We're talking about thousands of monuments all over Poland, gatherings, collective prayers, and people hanging portraits of the Pope in their homes. I literally had a small bust of the Pope at home, and my parents weren't even particularly religious lol. After the fall of communism in Poland, the Pope became quite literally the most important living Pole.
Unfortunately, as tends to happen when one person is worshipped on such a massive scale, things went a little overboard.
Millennials and older Gen Zs had been hearing since childhood about what an amazing person the Pope was, but it was presented to them mostly as straightforward, mind-numbing propaganda. One important thing to mention: Polish schools have religion classes, but these aren't classes about religious studies, they're Catholic catechism. They are technically voluntary, but when I was in school basically everyone attended them. Because of this, Polish schools were also saturated with love for the Pope. Even in the secular school I attended, we had competitions about our knowledge of the Pope, commemorated the anniversary of his death, watched movies about him, etc.
This was basically a universal experience for anyone who grew up in that era. In other words, wherever a young person went, John Paul II was somehow present in this part of their life.
As you can probably imagine, there is no better way to make young people dislike a particular person than forcing that person's cult on them through older generations.
That said, it's not entirely true that young Poles simply disliked the Pope. Today he probably isn't viewed particularly positively, but that wasn't necessarily the case back then.
Young people simply weren't as blindly devoted to him as older Poles were, who continued to absolutely love him. Then, with the rise of the early internet, people started making memes about the Pope.
Even the most innocent and relatively tasteful jokes were met with such outrage from older people that television started talking about an alleged "campaign against the Pope." If someone was caught saying anything negative about him, it was basically treated as if they deserved a public lynching and should have their Polish citizenship revoked (obviously not literally, but you know what I mean).
Once young people realized just how insanely angry older people got whenever someone insulted the Pope, he became a perfect tool for trolling older people online, as well as a generally edgy topic specifically because it broke a taboo.
And that's how "Czanzopapy" was born, some of the most blasphemous and outrageous memes about John Paul II. He was called the son of the Devil, there were jokes and insinuations that he abused children, etc.
Obviously, this caused a huge moral scandal. At first people reacted very negatively to these memes, but eventually they stopped shocking anyone. They still left a permanent mark on Polish internet culture, though, which this post is a pretty good example of.
Poles meme the number 2137 because the Pope died at 21:37. Every Pole knows this because the whole cult surrounding the Pope drilled that fact into our heads from childhood.
Sorry for writing such a massive wall of text. You could literally write entire books about this phenomenon.
You’re missing a huge part of the meme-ifying of JP2. He was found covering abuse by many priests of his Catholic Church. Maintaining status quo. When you combine cult like devotion with reality that he was just a flawed man holding onto ancient structures where priests can do no wrong… well.
Two more bits of aditional context:
After pope died his cult went overboard. He was EVERYWERE. To the point that tram line I took to school everyday was renamed "Pope's train" and was blasting trivia about pope form the speakers between stops. That insane level "popeganda", together with information of his involvment in covering up pedofilia cases in Catholic Church coming to light was what ultimately birthed the "cenzopapy" memes.
That's right, but I think there is also something else. After JP2 death there was a massive rush in Polish society. Mourning, remembrance, all that stuff. It has gotten to the point where fans of two certain football teams (Wisła Kraków vs KS Cracovia) came together in the day of funeral. They were united briefly until few days later someone from one team's fan club has attacked other fan, I guess that other has died.
As for me, millenial, it was clear in such moment that belief in JP2 is just one big theater and a big fraud. If JP2 was so powerful, why hasn't he build stronger societal foundation? Was it only a facade? For me, now I know, yes.
Three of us - me and two of my kids went through the education system since ethics were supposed to be a class alternative to religion, and I've never seen one organised. It's a Polish school unicorn.
These days ethics is an actual class, since a lot of people refuse to sign their kids up for religion classes. Luckily, ethics is also optional, and we withdrew our kid from it after 3rd grade because she kept complaining about them being pointless, infantilizing (the teacher "taught" thrm things they should've - and have - learned in kindergarten), and on top of it all, she used AI slop off YouTube as her medium of choice (which our kid hates).
hm yes interesting. stark contrast to today in slovakia, where the kids in my little brothers school are split 55% ethics and 40% christian religion, and 5% evangelical religion. did your school also have choosable languages?
This changed a bit now, since a lot of pupils resigned from religion classes in last three to five years. Also a lot of Ukrainian kids attend Polish schools and the number of non-catholic pupils grew a lot.
There's mandatory English class throughout the entire mandatory education period and for the last six years you choose a second language.
its the same in todays slovak schools (atleast in brothers school (i went to the same one) they have mandatory english and in seventh grade they can pick a language: russian, french, and german (the pick is permanent all the way to 9th grade, and then you can go to a normal school or a bilingual school from the 8th grade.). its pretty even split aswell but a most girls go to french in my brothers grade. the french people also have a lot of 0th classes (periods?) because they have 1 teacher than can teach french. they also go on a respective school trip (for a lot of money of course). germans to berlin, french to paris, and the russians can just tag along.
I like the trip thing - nice way to check how much you've learned. In public schools here going abroad with school doesn't happen much in general, not when you live in central or eastern Poland at least. In private schools it's more popular, but not in direct connection with language learned at the moment.
Yeah, but I don’t think it even was a real alternative back then, especially in small towns. When I was a kid, only one of our classmates didn’t attend religion classes and she just had some time off because nobody would hold ethics classes for just one person.
I remember when I was 13-ish and I said I didn't want to attend the religion classes, and everyone was trying to dissuade me. "Why is it even a problem to just sit there?" And when pressed, they'd finally admit it was because they didn't want to have to think what to do with me. I ended up just sitting it out in the library.
Pedophilia accusations - big part of the memes are about pope raping children or hiding pedophiles found within catholic church. There's no proof that he did former, there's that he knew about pedophiles and did nothing about it.
We call these "rzułta morda" which is like "yellow snout/mug", but with incorrect spelling, because this edited photo of pope was one of the first memes:
This is hilarious lol, when I was in Poland I definitely noticed all the JP2 stuff and I knew of the history of him advocating for Polish people who were suffering behind the iron curtain, but I obviously didn’t know the meme — although as a millennial who grew up in the “moral majority” culture in the US, I 100% support trolling boomers with no sense of irreverent humor; that’s why we loved South Park.
Someone elsewhere in this thread said something about the coat of arms, can you explain that reference too?
OP made the coat of arms into an image of kremówka. It's one of JP2's main memes that is popular both within the pope-loving and the pope-mocking crowds. Actually, the wikipedia page even explains the origin of the connection between kremówka and JP2:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonka
That is crazy interesting, thank you! Also shout out to young Poles, that's exactly how you should go about trolling the older generations and the catholic church.
Your wall of text was super fascinating to read, thank you for writing it! I'm Finnish and I had no idea about any of this, beyond the fact that John Paul II was Polish. Never thought I'd learn something new from a thread I thought was just about the game giving a random Pope character a silly nickname!
The only stuff I find inaccurate is saying he isn't particularly positively viewed now. His view, even in the millenial/Gen Z population, is still overwhelmingly positive outside of leftist and progressive circles (which aren't prevalent in Poland, but exist)
In Poland cult of Pope was of similar level like Kim Il Sung cult in North Korea. Trolls and jokers from chans decided it's great way to butthurt people and started making memes about Pope. Some were really nasty like censoring pr0n with Pope face. Memes now are various, funny, blasphemous, satire, pure butthurt. You name it you got it. Very popular is raiding boomers dedicated fanpages and spreading memes as it's still generating unbelivable butthurt beyond older people.
Now Cenzopapas become more mainstream and many average people enjoys them.
He's been described as gregarious and zelous, next time I might switch humble for eccentric or dilligent. He's been very athletic in his youth hence athletic and strong. Poet and journaler, cause he did some of those. Comfort eater due to the kremówki meme. Most of the others (aspiring blademaster etc.) are a result of gameplay (started him as a 16 year old archbishop of Gniezno)
Random event while holding court, idk what are the precise requirements, you have to be christian for "Satan" as it differs by faith (The Asatru get "Loki" for example).
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u/After_Mechanic_6297 10d ago
2137/10 Absolute Cinema