27. It would be difficult not to recall that the Marian Year took place only shortly before the events of 1989. Those events remain surprising for their vastness and especially for the speed with which they occurred. The Eighties were years marked by a growing danger from the "Cold War". 1989 ushered in a peaceful resolution which took the form, as it were, of an "organic" development. In the light of this fact, we are led to recognize a truly prophetic significance in the Encyclical Rerum Novarum: everything that Pope Leo XIII wrote there about Communism was borne out by these events, as I emphasized in the Encyclical Centesimus Annus.(12) In the unfolding of those events one could already discern the invisible hand of Providence at work with maternal care: "Can a woman forget her infant ...?" (Is 49:15).

After 1989 however there arose new dangers and threats. In the countries of the former Eastern bloc, after the fall of Communism, there appeared the serious threat of exaggerated nationalism, as is evident from events in the Balkans and other neighbouring areas. This obliges the European nations to make a serious examination of conscience, and to acknowledge faults and errors, both economic and political, resulting from imperialist policies carried out in the previous and present centuries vis-à-vis nations whose rights have been systematically violated.