Lech Walesa recalls the beginnings of the Solidarity movement, including Pope John Paul II's influence.
Lech Walesa, the shipyard electrician who helped topple Poland's communist regime by founding the Solidarity movement in 1980, credited the late Pope John Paul II as his inspiration at 25th anniversary celebrations Monday.
Walesa, who became his country's first postwar democratic president, said John Paul's visit to his native Poland in 1979 gave his countrymen the courage to stand up to the communist leaders.
"He did not tell us to make a revolution, he did not call for a coup, but he was so suggestive that we all had to define ourselves," Walesa told an international conference on Solidarity's legacy. "The Polish nation and many other nations awoke."
