On Divine Mercy Sunday, an observance Karol Wojtyla himself placed on the Catholic calendar, believers inside Immaculate Heart of Mary Church rummaged their graying heads for memories.

		An Apostle's journey This is the first in a series of columns looking at how the life and death of John Paul II has touched his American congregation.

Wojtyla was archbishop of Krakow in 1969 when he arrived for Mass on the arm of then-Bishop Vincent Leonard. A Polish cardinal was taken to see the soaring, domed church Polish steelworkers built by hand in their free hours on Polish Hill. That much everyone agrees. But it is not in these people to stretch the truth, even out of holy desire. Among the dozens who would have thrilled to say they recalled him, there was only Sylvia Tully.

"It's really Tuladziecki. My husband had it changed for work purposes," she said. Tully was laying out pastries in the basement as hundreds circled the church, then lined up to kiss a relic of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, whose 500-year-ago visions inspired John Paul to declare the feast day.

"He was a cardinal when he came here. He said a Mass."

And?

"I know it wasn't wintertime. It wasn't cold when he was here. Eileen will remember more. She's a little older than me."

Eileen Roczko, 75, arrived a half hour later.

"No. I don't remember," she said. "I know he was here."

Wojtyla visited Immaculate Heart, sometime in 1969 when it was warm. Eight years later, Sylvia Tully's mother-in-law, Victoria, was celebrating her 75th birthday when the television announced a new pope -- a Polish pope.

"She was so happy," Tully said. "She says, 'Oh my God -- a Polish Pope. On my 75th birthday.' "

Now Victoria Tuladziecki, who would have remembered the day in 1969, is gone. So is the Rev. John Jendzura, who was pastor. So, too, is Karol Wojtyla, who yesterday lay in state as John Paul II.

But even Zdzislaw Leszczynski -- "They call me Les" -- hasn't a specific recollection and he sat across a dinner table from Wojtyla the same year. Leszczynski was in Toronto. Wojtyla was on another leg of his North American tour.

"He was a scholar. You could see he had knowledge," Leszczynski said, stretching his own barrel of a frame upward to symbolize the stature of another man's learning. "It was just talk at the table."

Possibly it is a measure of the man who became John Paul II that the more salient memories are of a presence than a collection of anecdotes. The Polish of Immaculate Heart are a tactile and familial people. That one of their own walked the earth for 26 years as pope of the Roman Catholic Church still astonishes them, but they are quicker to remember the feeling than the words that evoked them.

On Friday, as they began the Novena to St. Faustina, they sang a modern hymn, written decades ago in honor of John Paul, and set to the tune of a Polish folk song, "Kiedy Ranne."

Kiedy Ranne is one of those untranslatable phrases that describes the early morning, just as dawn is about to break. The Poles have waited centuries for many things -- dawn, harvests, nationhood, independence.

O Nasz dobry Ojcze w Niebie,
Polskie dzieci prosza Ciebie
Wspomoz Namiestnika Swego
Naszego Ojca Swietego

Our gracious father in heaven
Your Polish children pray to you
Support our Pontiff, your envoy
Our Holy Father.

"When he was living, everyone boomed it out," said the Rev. Joseph Swierczynski, the pastor. "The other night? Everyone just broke down."

If John Paul's visit has faded to the stuff of spoken legend, if some day it is forgotten, there was little reason to doubt that he was on Polish Hill yesterday.

"We had a father. Right now, I'm looking for something that is going to give me a feeling of safety," said Dorota Boryszewska. She is 47 and has been in America five years. With her husband, Stanislav, Dorota came to the 9 a.m. Mass, which is said in Polish. In Poland, after Wojtyla became John Paul II, being Catholic approached the level of a political statement. A brave people became bold.

"We were able to shout our fight more openly," said Dorota. She apologized for her English, this woman who, knowing who had walked the floor of this church 36 years before, channeled his meaning with the eloquence of Shakespeare.