In little more than a decade, Solidarity, the trade union, prevailed and the Soviet Union crumbled, one of the seismic events of our times, all accomplished without open warfare.
"Without the pope, we would not be free even to this day," Dabrowski says.
In 1978, he was a teenage boy working a tractor in the fields when he came inside to hear the news of Wojtyla's ascension from cardinal to pope. He joined the seminary less than two years later.
Within the church, he joined the Society of Christ for Polish Emigrants. He left the country in 1989 -- the first time in 30 years it was possible for Poles to travel to the West -- and came to the United States.
And now, a flurry of time, he blinks and one's life passes. He looks at his watch; the time is short before the evening service. He stands and walks out the back door and over to the church.
He lights one candle, now two, three. The front of the sanctuary is adorned with two large portraits and one photograph.
The portraits are of the risen Jesus and of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, the darkened image that has been Poland's holiest icon for more than 500 years.
The enlarged and framed photograph is of Karol Wojtyla.
A woman walks in, silently. She takes a seat in one of the middle pews and begins to pray, silently. Another woman, then two teenage girls, one with a tiny stuffed bear hooked onto her purse. A few men, mostly keeping to the back rows.
Dabrowski leads them in the Lord's Prayer, then leaves the sanctuary.
The moments are going fast now.
Dabrowski, readying himself in the back, has made his plans. He will start this service for another priest, then think over what he will tell the flock on Sunday. Perhaps he will tell them of the treasures the pope has given to them. Perhaps he will mention how the pope once walked past and he felt the Holy Spirit pass through him. Or maybe he will tell them of the magical night the pope came back to Poland years ago and thousands of people serenaded him outside his window, joyful and singing, until he came outside at 2 a.m. and asked them to stop because "the pope likes to sleep, too."
It is impossible, Dabrowski says, to say what he felt that night, singing in the crowd in his native country, the love of God in his heart and a song on his lips, and the leader of his lifetime only a few feet away.
And now, in another country, on another shore, the end of it all.
He walks out to start the Mass.
Klemens Dabrowski is not afraid.
