For a communist country, it was strange to have an unauthorized gathering of a million people, but 40 years ago in Poland, the funeral of a simple parish priest brought the nation to a standstill to pay its last respects.

Father Jerzy Popiełuszko was not known as a great scholar or a strong intellectual. In fact, he barely made the grades to graduate from seminary, but Popiełuszko was a man of the people and spoke to them in unadorned, persuasive sermons, carving a significant crack in Poland’s socialist foundation.

Within five years the Polish People’s Republic would be overthrown and the Polish Republic restored; one of the key events leading to this change of government was the funeral of Father Popiełuszko.

The Polish Politburo saw the threat posed by Father Popiełuszko as evidence by arresting, detaining and frequently interrogating him. Until his murder, his house would be ransacked, his car sabotaged, and he was constantly harassed. The security services thought this little vicar would get the message. They wrongly assumed that if he was intimidated enough, he would stop preaching and support his congregations who were physically and spiritually starving.

Through all the interrogations, death threats and brutality, he never relented. Not that his messages were overtly anti-government, intending to incite a riot. Rather, he spoke plainly and, with the power of his simplicity, wove biblical stories and warnings to attack indirectly, but by obscure analogy, communism in general and the oppressive Polish government in particular.

Forty years ago, Poland’s politics pitted the people against the Soviet puppets. What started in a shipyard in Gdansk over rising food prices has become a nationwide strike focused on the plight of workers in Poland. Exposing the dangerous working conditions of Polish workers and their poor wages belied peace, prosperity and stability in a workers’ paradise.

These strikes would lead to further strikes until the Polish government was forced to resign and martial law was declared. All this was a public relations nightmare for the Soviet Union, which in 1984 was dealing with its own troubles and did not accept the distraction of a satellite leaving orbit. The one-two punch of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II spreading messages of hope and freedom on Radio Free Europe was simply too much for the regime. While people may not have control over their circumstances, their minds were engaged and inspired by Father Popiełuszko.

The more he preached, the bigger his following grew, and the need for the totalitarians to reduce his voice grew. In the socialist republic, the choice was easy – arrest him on false charges and put her in jail after a “fair” trial – but the regime’s henchmen overplayed their hand. They placed weapons and explosives in his car and home, but the scale, not to mention the provenance of the weapons, was beyond anything a priest could get. Once the Vatican and others intervened, he was released.

Instead of discouraging Father Jerzy, this only encouraged him. If it hadn’t been clear before, it was obvious that he was a simple priest taking over all the machines of the Polish communists. Undaunted, he continued, and his sermons were to be recorded, secretly left at the American consulate, and played on Radio Free Europe. Instead of silencing him, the government had inadvertently provided him with a megaphone.

This called for more urgent action. Perhaps the security forces had learned from the pursuit of the Godfather because they first tried to tamper with his car to precipitate a fatal accident. When that didn’t work, they performed the ultimate thug actions: kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and hiding the body.

Their plan worked well for two weeks, but the weights attached to the body failed to keep him submerged, and when his body floated to the top of the water, the brutality of the Polish People’s Republic was exposed. Father Popiełuszko will be the last of the nine priests killed by the communists.

No one accepted the attempt at plausible deniability. Everyone knew that nothing happened in Poland by private initiative, much less by chance. Even when three members of the security forces were put on trial, it was clear that they were acting on orders from above. Once convicted, they were kept in a kind of prison, but were later to be released. Everyone knew the government was responsible, but questions remained about the chain of command.

The funeral was a huge event. Even the official estimate had to admit that more than 250,000 mourners attended, and unofficial estimates placed the crowd at four times that number. To make sure the funeral didn’t turn into a riot, security forces were everywhere, but instead of acting belligerently towards the opposing officers, mourners chanted versions of “We Forgive You”. This expression of passive resistance stunned the government who so desperately wanted a pretext to justify brutal crowd control, but Father Popiełuszko’s message won out.

Even in death, he had again defied the government.

Over the next few years, as conditions worsened in Poland and throughout the Soviet Union, various popular uprisings and strikes challenged the government’s authority. As the tension within each uprising required government agreement on several issues, the communist regime collapsed in Poland and elsewhere. Through the lens of Jerzy Popiełuszko’s life, the economic, moral and political bankruptcy of Communism was exposed for the world to see.

In one of Father Popiełuszko’s last sermons, he said: “Violence is not victorious, although it may triumph for a while. We must unite in reconciliation in the spirit of love, but also in the spirit of justice. Love is greater than justice and at the same time finds peace in justice.”

Sometimes the words of a simple priest are more powerful than all the concentrated power and force of a socialist regime. No wonder millions of people continue to visit his grave in Warsaw every year.