Last week Andrzej Duda took office as Poland’s new president, having run as head of a right-wing party with a history of pugnaciousness with Germany. Under the heading of the “dog that didn’t bark,” perhaps the most intriguing Catholic angle is that it happened with almost no reference to what the pope might be thinking.
Such silence would have been unimaginable under either of the two previous pontiffs, who were Polish and German respectively. Where John Paul II or Benedict XVI stood, and how they might react to new developments, inevitably would have been part of the discussion.
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