Polish Pope’s driver laid to rest

He died on 8 February, aged 89.

Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, the Polish Pope’s secretary, said during the ceremony that Jozef Mucha’s job was not easy.

He did his best to keep communist secret police agents away from Karol Wojtyła. When leaving the Curia premises, he always tried to shake off a pursuing secret police car.

Józef Mucha’s reminiscences of the time spent with the future Pope are contained in a long interview with him, which was published in book form in 2006 under the title Half a million kilometers with Cardinal Wojtyła.

In it, he recalled that the cardinal used to read a lot during the journeys and had a special lamp and a book stand installed in front of the rear seat. It was Jozef Mucha who happened to bring the news of the death of Pope John Paul I to Karol Wojtyła.

It was at breakfast and it was clear that the Cardinal must have had a premonition of things to come as he dropped his spoon and asked for all the day’s meetings and functions to be cancelled because of a strong migraine.

After becoming Pope, he made sure that his driver was invited for the inauguration of his pontificate and in later years wrote many letters to him.

Following Karol Wojtyła’s election to papacy, Jozef Mucha continued his work in Kraków, serving as the personal driver of Cardinal Macharski for 13 years, until his retirement in 1991.

Last year, he attended the Pope’s beatification ceremony in Rome. (mk)