Brass plaque authenticating the Madonna
Always the people of Pastwiska informed Pope John Paul II of the happenings of the community and the valley and as such he continued in contact with the people throughout his Papacy. At some point the Italian football player Paulo Rossi’s family gave the Pope an altar Tabernacle and this too was passed on by the Pontiff to our little church.
And one day without explanation an ornate wooden cross arrived from the Vatican.
The final and probably the most personal of the gifts to St. Jozef’s church in Pastwiska from Pope John Paul II is the Mantle. It was decided to order a new mantle to be made for the priest but it was not possible to obtain gold thread at the time, as a visit was pending to Rome it was decided to wait and buy the thread there. At a meeting with the Pontiff the problem with the gold thread was mentioned and the Pope said that the people of Pastwiska should have his gold mantle; it was almost new as he had only worn it once.
The only time the Pope returned to our beautiful valley was when in 1997 he visited Krosno, the nearest large town to here. Circumstances and the lack of time prevented him from coming on foot and so he was only able to over fly in his helicopter, nevertheless as he circled the church in Pastwiska the stunned villagers came out to greet him.
How wrong could that Polish Army Colonel have been at the border crossing in 1990 by saying that there was no such place as Pastwiska – the words after all just meant a field of potatoes!
So this little church, in the tiny village, in the river valley, in the very south-