Few know that Sister Emilia Ehrlich collaborated with St John Paul II for many years. Her role in the pontificate has never been properly described. Hence, her discreet work has faded into oblivion. Books on the Pope are silent about her or only mention her. They devote attention mainly to Karol Wojtyła’s friendship with Dr Wanda Półtawska or Professor Anna Teresa Tymieniecka. The influence of these two women on the pope, and even the pontificate, is discussed extensively. Journalists describe sensational events, especially after these women revealed their correspondence with John Paul II. Thus, it is in vain to peruse the books “Wojtyla a kobiety”, “Le donne di Wojtyla”, “Women in the Life of John Paul II” in search of information about Sr Emilia Ehrlich.
Before the beatification of John Paul II, an article “The Pope and the Nun” appeared in “Gazeta Wyborcza” (26.04.2011), in which Aleksandra Klich, on the basis of interviews with people who knew the Ursuline nun, presented her character. Among the interviewees is Dr Anna Karoń-Ostrowska, a person claiming a special relationship with the Pope, described as his “student” and “friend”.
Need to know
The article “The Pope and the Nun”, we learn that during the year-long stay in Rome of doctoral student Anna Karoń in the early 1990s, Sr Ehrlich served as a “liaison” with John Paul II, passing the Pope’s answers to her. In the article, we can also read that the Ursuline nun expressed her indignation towards the student for “taking time away from the Pope with her doctorate”. It may come as no surprise, then, that Anna Karoń-Ostrowska described her – which is also quoted in the aforementioned article – with the words “woman dragon”, “when she stabbed with a sharp word, it hurt for a long time”.
It is my intention to present Sr Ehrlich from a slightly different perspective than Aleksandra Klich did. In doing so, I want to shed light on her relationship with the Pope, in which the term ‘friendship’ is not crucial and decisive for the nature of the bond. The conviction of mutual respect, substantive cooperation and dedication full of discretion, which she shared with John Paul II, serve as a reminder that there are situations in life when a common work is more important than one’s own self, ambitions or fame, that human bonds are not measured in centimetres of closeness to another person or in the number of visits, and are not expressed in a unilateral declaration, but in the co-responsibility of one person for another and for the truth and good that is jointly acknowledged and realised.
The Ehrlich family
Constance was the daughter of Ludwik Ehrlich, a world-renowned professor of international law who came from an East Poland Jewish family. Ludwik, after graduating from the University of Lviv, further educated himself in Europe and the United States. He taught at the universities of Oxford and Berkeley. In 1917, he was baptised into the Catholic Church, and in 1923 he married Frances Thornton Lawton, an American of Protestant faith. About a year later, the couple moved to Lvov, where the professor developed his scientific and didactic work, including setting up the Diplomatic Study Centre,directing its activities until the outbreak of war. This was an innovative initiative on a European scale, serving to prepare personnel to serve the Polish state. Its graduates included for example Jan Karski, an officer, diplomat and courier for the Polish Underground Resistance (AK).
Constance (Konstancja) was born in 1924 and her brother Andrew in 1928.They grew up in an academic atmosphere, with English and Polish spoken at home. They constantly improved their language skills and diligently acquired knowledge. This took place in an atmosphere of respect for cultural and religious differences, between the “fervent Catholicism of a Polish father” and the “cool Protestantism of an American mother”.
A peaceful childhood was interrupted by the turmoil of war, separating family members. All of them remained in the country and each went through imprisonment. Captured during a raid organised by the Gestapo in Warsaw, Constance spent three months in the Majdanek extermination camp. Then she, as a liaison officer and paramedic of the Polish Underground Resistance, and her brother Andrzej, as a sapper in the Kilinski Battalion, took part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. They both survived. After her release from the oflag, Contance joined the congregation of the Ursulines of the Roman Union, taking the name of Sister Emilia, and Andrew stopped believing in God. The family settled in Krakow, where Professor Ehrlich took up a post at the Jagiellonian University. At this university, Sr Emilia graduated in English philology, and in 1977, at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Krakow, she defended her doctorate in biblical theology and in the same year went to Rome to deepen her knowledge at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and prepare her habilitation, an academic degree leading to being a full professor.
Relations of Sr Emilia Ehrlich with Bishop Wojtyla
The Ehrlichs’ acquaintance with Bishop Karol Wojtyła dates from the Krakow period onwards. They may have met thanks to Prof. Adam Vetulani, historian of law and canonist. In any case, Prof. Ehrlich and Wojtyla were linked not only by their faith, but also by their historical interests. Ehrlich was the “discoverer” for the world of Paweł Włodkowic and promoter of the contribution of Polish legal culture to the development of international law. From Prof. Ehrlich, Wojtyla developed his interest in Wlodkowic and the issue of the rights of nations. According to Andrzej Ehrlich, his father and the Krakow archbishop were linked by a close friendship. Adam Redzik, a researcher of Ehrlich’s oeuvre, argues similarly. In the 1950’s, Professor Ehrlich was excluded from the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) for his participation in a pilgrimage of lawyers to Jasna Góra. In the following years the Academy also refused him inclusion in its body, arguing, among other things, that “whoever is friends with Wojtyla cannot be a member of the PAN”.
It is worth mentioning that neither during the Nazi occupation, nor during the years of the communist regime, did the Ehrlichs consider moving from Poland to the United States or obtaining American citizenship for their children, even though they obviously had the option.
Librarian, biblical scholar, theologian
Sister Emilia worked at the Catechetical Institute run by the Ursuline Sisters in Krakow from 1968 to 1977. She helped Cardinal Wojtyla prepare speeches in English delivered during his visits to the United States and Canada and Australia. There are recordings saved, in which Sr Emilia corrects the cardinal’s pronunciation in English.
The election of Wojtyla as Pope, on 16 October 1978, was received by Sr Emilia above all with an awareness of the responsibility he had to face. A few days afterwards, John Paul II invited her to the Apostolic Palace and asked her to collaborate with him. This collaboration lasted until the year 2000. The scope of her duties went beyond overseeing the translations of Wojtyla’s works of authorship and looking after the papal library. It was conjectured that she made a “huge intellectual contribution” and that she oversaw the biblical side of papal documents. Halina Bortnowska, who knew Sr Ehrlich well, stated: “It was evident that the Pope trusted her, and she reciprocated with absolute devotion and discretion”. Archbishop of Lublin Józef Życiński also confirmed that Sister Emilia had worked closely with the Holy Father. It was also said that “in order to guess what the Pope was working on or what the subject of the next document would be, one had to follow what issues Sister Ehrlich was dealing with in the Roman libraries”.
Archive of Sister Emilia Ehrlich
Before leaving the Eternal City and returning to Krakow due to a progressive neurological illness, Sr Emilia set apartsome of her materials and donated them to the John Paul II Pontificate’s Centre for Documentation and Research in Rome. These include materials related to the editing of papal documents and speeches, correspondence concerning translations of Wojtyla’s works or with authors of books about John Paul II. They are also summaries and studies of the readings that the Holy Father needed for his work, or scripts related to papal events or journeys.
It should be mentioned that one room of the Apostolic Palace was the Pope’s handy library. Necessary literature was collected there, as well as books sent to the Vatican. John Paul II reviewed these publications on a fairly systematic basis and pre-sorted them. Sr Ehrlich’s task was to prepare summaries of those items which the Pope did not have time to read, although their subject matter interested him.
It is also important to emphasise the specificity of Pope’s work, which consisted of three stages: learning about an issue, reflecting on it and editing the text. Sister Emilia prepared the material for the first stage, often specific problems in the light of the Bible or theology. As he read, the Pope would mark passages, such as biblical quotations, to which reference had to be made in the document. Sister was also asked to consult with experts about a text or part of a text already written.
In the materials there are annotations by the Sister and the Pope or attached cards with detailed instructions. Sometimes the Holy Father would ask Sister Emilia to talk to him, sometimes to advise him, or it was she who pointed out some shortcoming or mistake, or suggested a different take on a particular issue. For example: “I am very sorry that I am writing all this by letter […] but for the cause this thought seems important to me”, wrote Sr Ehrlich, arguing for the encyclical “Veritatis splendor” to point out from the outset that moral theology is not only a philosophy, but is based primarily on Revelation. In fact each comment bears the Pope’s handwritten acknowledgement: “Grazie s. Emilia”, sometimes they are longer sentences. A few years ago, an article (available online in Polish) by Sister Julia Marta Knurek, an archivist of the John Paul II Pontifcate’s Centre, “The Contribution of Dr Emilia Ehrlich, an Ursuline nun, to the Pontificate of John Paul II”, was published, giving a broader overview of these archival materials.
Was she a friend of the Pope?
There is nothing in Sr Ehrlich’s archival legacy that speaks expressis verbis of their friendship, even though they were almost contemporaries in age and their acquaintance lasted almost forty years. On the other hand, one can see mutual respect, responsibility for the pontificate, for Catholic doctrine, for the contribution of Polish Christian culture to the history of the universal Church. They were united by faith and patriotism and they wanted to leave a Polish trace in the history of the papacy and a papal trace in the history of Poland.
In mid-2002, Sr Emilia could no longer speak normally and moved around in a wheelchair. In the time of John Paul II’s last pilgrimage to Poland in August of that year, she was brought to the Krakow curia. When the Holy Father saw Sister Emilia, he raised his hand up and with difficulty but loudly said: “Sister Emilia. I owe a great deal to you”. During the meeting, Sr Emilia did not utter a single word. About this visit, the Pope, thanking her for coming, wrote to her: ‘Silence is sometimes more eloquent than words’. Sister Emilia died on 14 December 2006 and was laid to rest in her family tomb in the Rakowicki Cemetery in Cracow.
I am convinced that Sr Emilia Ehrlich was a stranger to seeking a special role for herself with the Holy Father in order to boast about it before others. I suspect that she did not regret her unfinished habilitation degree or her unrealized academic career. Sr Emilia’s family, her experience of the death camp in Majdanek and her fight during the Warsaw Uprising, her knowledge of and her love for the Holy Scriptures clearly indicated to her that ultimately it is God who directs a person’s life. God assigned her the role of the Pope’s librarian, and also of theologian and collaborator. With her education, talents, knowledge of languages and diligence, she was able to contribute to the cause of human salvation, which sounds pathetic to many, but is a lifelong duty for people of deep faith. She did not waste her time in making herself known to her contemporaries and gaining the memory of posterity. Can the relationship and bond linking her to John Paul II be described as friendship? It is best if the reader answers this question for himself.
Andrzej Dobrzyński
Photo: © Vatican Media