Classical Music in Poland and the Europe of Chopin - From the Reviewer's Notebook

Here where I live in Poland there is a  intense  renewal of  the public expression of love and devotion to this great Polish religious figure, one of the rare world famous Polish historic beings apart from Fryderyk Chopin, Ignacy Paderewski, Madame Curie and possibly General Sikorski.  Large television screens have been set up in squares in the cities throughout the country where people have come together to watch the unprecedented simultaneous canonization of these two popes in Rome, Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II. This unique ceremony performed by the equally unprecedented presence of two living Popes, Pope Francis and the Emeritus Pope Benedict.  Here i n Warsaw i nstead of a number of cliched, no doubt platidudinous observations on my part after standing in the misty damp among crowds of an early spring morning, I will let Pope Francis speak in superior words of great simplicity pregnant with meaning which expresses the predominant feeling among the crowds in Pilsudsk