The Second Miracle on Nowolipki, 1970
On October 29, 1970, at 7:30 p.m., a lieutenant colonel of the Polish Army called Warsaw Police Headquarters and informed the duty officer that outside his tenement house at 23 Nowolipki Street, near the Church of St. Augustine in Warsaw’s Muranow district, women had gathered and were staring at reflections of street lights on the church tower.
The Security Service, specifically Departments III, responsible for combating the opposition, and IV, responsible for combating the Church, launched Operation “Tower”. The action proved effective: there was no repeat of the events of the 1950s, although unexpected difficulties appeared again.
Eleven years after the apparitions of 1959, the situation was better controlled. The crowd on Nowolipki was smaller, and the militia had a special manual with instructions on how to proceed in cases of alleged miracles. The document, titled Some problems of political-operational work connected with the occurrence of alleged miracles, was issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Department of Personnel and Training in 1966 and was intended for internal use only.
At 10:30 p.m., Lieutenant Colonel Jerzy Kwil, head of Department IV of Warsaw Police Headquarters, knocked on the door of the parish priest of St. Augustine’s, Father Mieczyslaw Jablonka. At the same time, an engineer from Mostostal was brought to headquarters to determine what paint should be used on the top of the tower; the color and type of paint could matter for calming the situation.
On October 31, the painting crew was ready to work, but the basket in which the painter was to stand had defective grips. Only on November 3 at 6 a.m. did the workers reach the roof of the 70-meter tower. The paint from 1959 had already worn off completely.
The painting was completed after more than six and a half hours of work. As eleven years earlier, the fresh paint was washed away by rain, even though two coats had been applied. The authorities immediately ordered another painting, this time with marine paint mixed with sawdust, resistant to rain.
During the second painting the conditions were extreme: rain, strong wind and a wet tower surface. The painter working 70 meters above the ground could not use a brush, so he was ordered to apply the paint by hand. The militia did not stop the operation.
Members of the command staff observed the work through a telescope from Warsaw Police Headquarters in the Mostowski Palace and instructed the workers by radio on where to apply a thicker layer and correct imperfections. The commander of the operation also ordered the collar and small turret to be painted. When a stain was noticed at the very end, the chilled painter explained that it was only a bend in the sheet metal.
After the crew descended from the tower, Operation “Tower” was ended. People stopped gathering near the church, and the matte, greenish finial no longer reflected the lights.
The final report noted that the militia returned the key to the tower to the parish priest, but a second, copied key remained in the possession of Department IV.
The paint was not removed until 1995.