World Notes POLAND

When Pope John Paul II last toured Poland in 1987, he was greeted by cheering throngs eager to demonstrate both the depth of their Roman Catholic faith and their contempt for the communist regime in Warsaw. Last week John Paul paid his first visit to his homeland since the collapse of communist rule. This time the crowds were smaller and more muted, while the Pope's message was aimed not at repression but at the danger of unchecked freedom.

In sermons based on the Ten Commandments, John Paul denounced excessive materialism, divorce, contraception and the separation of church and state, imploring Poles not to stray from the Catholic values that had helped deliver ) them from communism. He saved his most stinging comments for abortion, which has been legal since 1956 but is now in danger of being outlawed by a church- backed bill under consideration in Poland's parliament. At an outdoor Mass in Radom, the Pontiff compared abortion to the Holocaust and sternly asked, "What parliament has the right to say, 'You are free to kill'?" The polite applause bore witness to Poles' growing ambivalence toward church interference in government policy. According to recent surveys, almost 60% of Poles oppose the antiabortion bill and consider the church's influence in public life "excessive."