Rafał Łatka, ks. Józef Marecki

The Catholic Church

in ‘People’s Poland’

Reviewers: dr. hab. Ryszard Gryz prof. UJK, dr. hab. Krzysztof Sychowicz

Translation: Jerzy Giebułtowski

Proofreading: Andrew Pietrzak

Production manager: Sławomir Gajda

Graphic design of the cover: Katarzyna Dziedzic-Boboli

Photograph on the cover: PAP

Typeset: Marcin Koc

Copyright by: Institut of National Remembrance Commission of the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, Warsaw 2018

ISBN (epub) 978-83-8376-462-7

ISBN (mobi) 978-83-8376-463-4

ipn.gov.pl

ksiegarniaipn.pl

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

The Church and the communists in the early days of ‘People’s Poland’ (1944–1956)

Anti-Church structures

The policy of ‘going past each other’

Anti-Church offensive

Campaign against the clergy

The Church and the rigged elections of 1947

The accord of 1950

Restricting the scope of the Church’s activity

‘Non-possumus’ and further repressions

Summary

Chapter 2

The Church under Władysław Gomułka (1956–1970)

The thaw of 1956

The primate’s release and regime’s concessions

Primate Wyszyński’s visit to Rome and its consequences

Tightening the screw on the Church

The Second Vatican Council

The Great Novena and Millennium celebrations

Letter from the Polish bishops to the German bishops

The confrontation of 1966

Church administration on Western and Northern Territories

The events of March ’68 and December ’70

Summary

Chapter 3

Edward Gierek’s era. Between liberalisation and disintegration

Anti-Church structures

Repressions, surveillance, disintegration

Fighting the Church’s presence in the public sphere

Secularisation and the struggle for young people’s hearts and minds

Opposing the Church’s political involvement and its contacts with the opposition

Pope Karol Wojtyła, John Paul II, comes to Poland

Summary

Chapter 4

The 1980s. Dialogue and persecution

Anti-Church structures

Repressions, surveillance, disintegration

Church – regime – Solidarity relations

Martial law. The Church is “against extreme measures”

Toward systemic transformation

Summary

Selected bibliography

Published sources

Studies

Index of names

Introduction

For a thousand years the Church has played a unique role in Poland. It was engaged not only in religious activity but also – for a number of centuries – it was also active in the field of education, and social and charitable operations. The clergy was involved social justice efforts, became e ngaged in the fight for Poland’s independence. They were unquestioned leaders of the nation and society. Members of the Catholic clergy were involved in academic, cultural and publishing activities. Poland – in the Middle Ages, in the 16th century or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – never was a religious monolith. Famous for its multicultural character, religious freedom and independence. The supreme value – next to independence – was the right to practice one’s religion. In Poland there were other churches apart from the Roman Catholic Church: of the Latin, Greek Catholic and Armenian, and from the 1920s the Byzantine-Slavic rites, as well as the Orthodox and Protestant churches. There were also many religious Jewish communities. The state functioned thanks to the social order and the law, and because people followed the best moral and ethical bodes, respected the different social, national and language groups and every citizen as well. Such values in the Polish Republic were rooted in the Christian religion.

With a rich background historical enjoying substantial authority in the society, an exemplary patriotic stance during World War II, the Catholic Church entered a new socio-political reality when the soviets marched into Poland in 1944–1945. The war brought painful losses and casualties to the Church. Around 3,000 priests, several hundred monks and nuns were killed in military operations, in concentration camps, labor camps, and prisons. There were also substantial casualties among the faithful. Those who survived were sick, mentally injured or morally depraved. The war wreaked destruction on many cities, towns, and villages. Those who returned from the camps, and from captivity, found their homes in ruin or burned to the ground. It is generally agreed that around 5,600,000-6 million Polish citizens lost their lives as a result of the occupation, that is from the moment of the German and Slovak invasion on September 1, 1939 and the Soviet invasion on September 17, 1939 to May 1945. As a result of Stalinist repressions against Poles in Polish eastern provinces, over a million Polish citizens were forcibly deported into the Soviet heartland. Those who remained were detained in German or Soviet prisons or camps. This tragedy was further compounded by the Ukrainian nationalists at whose hand 120-150,000 Poles died, and several tens of thousands were forced to leave their homes.

In Teheran and Yalta the governments of the United States, Great Britain and of the Soviet Union decided that Poland’s borders should be moved to the West, and millions of Poles were deported, which was branded ‘repatriation’. Those forced to leave their homes could only take those belongings that survived the war. And even though they did take their belongings, these were only movable items such as furniture, some small household appliances, livestock, some bad linen, clothes, and items of everyday use. They would leave their fatherland, where their families had lived for centuries, their homes, farms, schools, churches and cemeteries. Transported westward by rail, several weeks later they would find themselves on a territory that was culturally alien to them, with a different landscape, in towns unfamiliar or villages in unknown farms. Poles expelled from their abodes in the East were forced to settle in so-called ‘Regained Territories’, where they replaced the German dwellers, who were driven from their homes by decision of the victorious allies (USA, Great Britain and USSR). This exodus of millions completed the material destruction that began with the onset of war and effectively carried out by the subsequent occupiers.

For the Poles who survived the destruction of the war, the postwar reality had one more dimension – the new political system. It was not decided on by the people, by their choice and conscious decisions, but was imposed by the Soviets, who brought the Poles a new political system – communism. Although it was called ‘socialism’, and some trappings of democracy were retained, it was a foreign system, which was never embraced by the society at large.

It was not our ambition to give a comprehensive study of the Catholic Church in Poland from 1944 to 1989, when all political power was concentrated in the hands of communists apparatchiks. Rather, we aim at acquainting the reader with the general issues, show the crucial events, inform the reader about the complex problems the Church faced in that difficult political reality, in a state which was officially supposed to respect religious feelings, and guarantee every citizen the freedom of religion, while in fact it fought against every denomination and all forms of piety. What was important for the communist authorities was not public good but the introduction of atheistic ideas, the so-called ‘lay state’ and its fight against the Catholic Church and other religious organizations. They tried to gain control over the Church’s hierarchy and to make its actions dependent on the decisions of the Party and the government. It was the Marxist-Leninist party that formulated the state’s religious policy and was bent on deciding about conscience and the religious life of the citizens.

The aim of this publication is to systematize and organize our knowledge of the issues related to the Catholic Church, which were, and still are of paramount importance for our understanding of the fundamental issues of political and social life. Therefore we reduced the number of footnotes to a minimum.

For many, including those who now live in Poland, ‘people’s Poland’ is a bygone era, a time past, variously assessed. For historians it is a period of several decades, which still requires study, finding new sources and verifying them. It also involves the breaking of subjective barriers and avoiding the transposition of personal experiences onto one’s syntheses. We, contemporary historians, are often asked if it is not to early to formulate syntheses of events so recent that we might need more time to assess them properly. But we believe that we should start making efforts to systematically describe the past, even the most recent events. The communist regime wreaked havoc on individual consciences, blurred values, and confused concepts. Relativism penetrated everyday life and undermined the hierarchy of moral values. Limited liberalization did not translate into individual welfare, but rather led to the destruction of work ethos and disrespect of human efforts.

Those who held prominent positions in communist Poland were active in the security services, although they were not always the leading figures in the fight carried out by the government and the party, still exert a decisive influence on events and create current policy, despite the 25 years that have passed since the Round Table talks that marked the beginning of transformation. People whose reputation was stained by their political activity in earlier decades, which was often detrimental to state interest, still use their old contacts to carry out a peculiar game that is detrimental to the general public. In the Church’s milieu there are still people who not only are suspected of collaboration with the functionaries of the communist secret services, but we have documentary evidence that they have been involved in actions against the Church. Despite the fact that their past involvement is no secret to anyone, these people are honored, respected, decorated and still treated like people of authority. Our knowledge of the past would help us avoid mistakes in the future. Knowledge of the past and of the Church’s activity in communist Poland would help us recall and understand how important was the Church’s role in the past.

When one discusses the situation of the Catholic Church in Poland after World War II, it would be worthwhile to ponder on the fate of the faithful in other Soviet-dominated countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In the neighboring Czechoslovakia, as in other Soviet block countries, the authorities banned the Greek Catholic Church. Many priests, monks and nuns were defrocked or removed from convents or monasteries, or detained. Monasteries, churches and buildings were nationalized or handed over to the Orthodox Church. In all the socialist camp countries (the smallest degree in Poland) Roman Catholic clergy was subject to all kinds of fiscal and administrative repressions. Those clergy members who refused to follow the orders of the secular authorities were banned from pastoral duties. A number of bishops, curia employees and clergy members loyal to the Holy See were imprisoned or sent to labor camps. Church property was nationalized, a move that deprived the clergy and the parishes of their sources of income. The government seized schools, hospitals and boarding houses. Religious publishing houses religious editorial offices were closed down, with chaplains removed from the armed forces, hospitals and prisons. A number of seminaries were closed down, while those that remained open were subject to the total control of the lay authorities and the Office for Religious Affairs (ORA). Pastoral duties were permitted only to priests loyal to the authorities and accepted by officials of the Office for Religious Affairs. Not only the clergy but also communities of the faithful were ‘saturated’ with informants, whose task was to inform Party leaders, the religious affairs administration and state security functionaries about instances of infringement of the law on religious affairs. Religious education at all levels was abolished, and extramural religious classes were deemed violation of the law. Those members of the clergy who made such attempts were severely punished – not only fined but they were also banned from pastoral work. Pastoral service for university students was abolished. In most countries, outside of Poland, those who attended church services and ceremonies were repressed. People in Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and in Soviet republics were subjected to a program of secularization. The media kept silent about religious matters. In all of these countries, next to the ‘official’ Church that was recognized by the communist regime, there was an underground Catholic Church, which dropped this stains in the last decade of the 20th century thanks to the teachings of John Paul II, among others.

Almost fifty years of communist domination over Poland, in the years 1944–1989 that marked communist dominance over Poland appears to be a homogenous period, one dominated by the rule of people submissive to the Soviets. But this is only how things appear to have been. We can distinguish several periods, economically politically, and socially, and their borders are marked such events as changes of the ruling group, social tension, and political crises. This classification is reflected in the structure of this book, which comprises four chapters (the first two by Father Józef Marecki, the other two by Rafał Łatka).

Chapter 1 deals with the relations between the communists and representatives of the Catholic Church, especially of the hierarchy in the early years ‘People’s Poland’ (1944–1956). It was a period of consolidation of the communist regime, accompanied by ruthless struggle against the anti-communist underground. It was also a time when brutal fight against the Church began, manifested in the isolation (in fact, the detention of primate Stefan Wyszyński) and trials of several bishops, among the particularly cruel and ruthless trial of the Kielce Bishop Czesław Kaczmarek, an orchestrated trial aimed at discrediting the late Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha, which came to be known as the ‘Cracow Curia Trial’. The first postwar decade is marked by such events as the removal of apostolic administrators from the Western and Northern Territories, multiple arrests of clergy members, accused of high treason and collaboration with the German occupier, with many receiving long prison terms. A number of those trials ended in a death sentence, but no more than a few were actually carried out. That decade not only brought repressions against the clergy and the hierarchy, but also repressions against Catholic activists, members of prayer groups, fraternities, parish councils and even church choirs. Persecution was directed against lay employees of Catholic publishing houses, journalists, wholesalers and bookstores. Finally, it was a period of illegal appropriation of Church property, it destroyed the heritage of Catholic education system, of charitable institutions, hospitals, and the broadly understood social activity.

Chapter 2 covers the years 1956–1970, when the Party leader was Władysław Gomułka, and deals with the events of 1956, known as ‘the thaw’, when primate Wyszyński was released and short-lived concessions to the Catholic Church were made. We mention the primate’s trip to Rome, his meeting with the Holy Father and the Vatican hierarchs, when he presented the political situation and the actual condition of the Polish Church. The picture of anti-Church operations in Soviet bloc countries which the primate presented, set the relevant directions of eastern policy and showed the danger the communists posited for the Church. It was already then that the primate was recognized by the Vatican as a man who could save the situation not only in Poland, but in the entire communist bloc. As time had shown, the hierarch was absolutely right. We discuss here the exacerbation of the Polish communist authorities towards the church after the than, which manifested itself in the abolition of religious education in schools, draft of seminarists, all kinds of fines imposed on army members of the clergy, appropriation of property for overdue taxes, blocking nominations for rectors, and refusal to issue passports for members of the clergy. This period is also a time of the Second Vatican Council, critical for the Church, a time of the Great Novena and Millenium celebrations, of the Polish bishops address to German bishops and the directly related issue of the Church’s provisional administration on former German territory established after World War II. At the end of this period Poland saw the events of March 1968 and the bloody incidents on the Baltic seaboard two years later. The hierarchs took a firm stand on human rights.

Chapter 3 covers the years 1970–1980, called ‘the Gierek decade’, marked by continued persecution of the Church. Under the aegis of the Party, anti-Church administration structures were being developed, as was the anti-religion department of state security that fought against the Catholic Church and other religious organization. Repressive measures, surveillance and disintegration measures against the clergy and certain groups of the faithful were perfected. All kinds of steps were taken to eliminate the Church from public life. Through administrative action attempts were made to destroy the integrity of the hierarchy and of the rest of the clergy. Relentless efforts were made to win the heart and minds of young people. It was during this period that the process of secularization carried out by the state and party apparatus reached its peak. Attempts were also made to isolate the Church from the opposition, which often enjoyed the clergy’s support and received assistance from them. The last act of this decade was the election of Karol Wojtyła, who became John Paul II. This event and his pilgrimage to Poland in 1979 were the turning point. The intimidated, frightened and – one would think – hapless Polish Catholics, cast off their fears, began to feel free, and in John Paul II they found a powerful advocate and spiritual guardian. In the late 1970s and for another decade he was a beacon of hope for the Poles.

Chapter 4, the last one, deals with the Church – state relations in a very difficult and volatile time. The chapter begins with two momentous events: the birth of the Solidarity movement, and the martial law. The decade ends with the ‘Round Table’ and the elections of 1989. We discuss the Party’s measures with respect to the Church, marked by repressions against the clergy, sometimes assassinations, the difficult and opaque relations between the Church, Solidarity and the regime, John Paul II’s pilgrimages to Poland and the aspirations for systemic transformation.

This publication aims to show the difficult road of the Catholic Church in the shaping of the nation’s identity, its role in regaining freedom and the building of the future in the second half of the 20th century.

St. Alexander’s Church in pl. Trzech Krzyży, Warsaw, 1946 (AIPN – Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej [Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance)

Chapter 1

The Church and the communists in the early days of ‘People’s Poland’ (1944–1956)

The end World War II significantly changed Poland’s geopolitical situation. The state’s political borders changed[1], people were deported[2] from Poland’s Eastern Borderlands to former German territories that were given by the Soviet Union and its western allies (Warmia, Pomerania, the Western territories with the Lower Silesia), the assumption of power by Polish Workers’ Party activists, supported by Soviet communists and Joseph Stalin himself, all these events heralded the new order that was gradually being established in Poland. All forms of political insubordination or opposition were being eliminated. In September 1939, the moment the Soviet Union entered the war, or precisely speaking, the moment it started fulfilling its commitment under the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of August 23, 1939. The government, and the president alongside the commander-in-chief left the territory of the Republic of Poland. They went through Hungary to France and later to England. Despite the difficulties the state operated without interruption; the president and the government operated in London, there was an efficient military organisation. In occupied Poland there were government delegate offices. This state of affairs was contested by the Soviets. In order to secure their future influence on Polish territory and to enable the execution of Stalin’s far-reaching plans, as early as March 1943 the Soviets founded the Union of Polish Patriots, and in January 1944 they established the Central Bureau of Polish Communists in the USSR. The new borders of Poland were finally determined at the conferences of the allies in Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam.

The Soviets had already begun to establish the communist system in Poland in late 1943. Polish communists, aided by their Soviet comrades and substantial NKVD support were slowly seizing power, introducing new laws and ruthlessly eliminating opposition.

On January 1, 1944 the State National Council was formed. Its members were communists from the Polish Workers’ Party and people who supported them. One of its first resolutions established the People’s Army, the communist armed force. The Council’s programme declaration stressed that the government-in-exile acted contrary to Polish interests, and therefore it did not and does not have the right to represent the people. The Council’s members postulated major social changes, including the expropriation of ‘large landowners’ and offering their land to small farmers. The Council further postulates the nationalisation of industry, mines, and banks. Even before the cessation of military operations they demanded that Poland be granted certain territories that belonged to Germany before the war. At the same time a new border with the Soviet Union was to be designated. On July 21 1944, in Moscow the Council established the Polish Committee of National Liberation as a counterbalance for the legitimate government of the Republic of Poland in Exile, which the Soviet Union did not recognise. On July 22, 1944 at night, Radio Moscow broadcast an official message that the Polish Committee of National Liberation was established, however it said that the Committee was formed in Chełm near Lublin, which was a blatant lie. Members of the Committee did not arrive in Chełm until on the night of July 27/28, 1944.[3] At that time there was a local government-in-exile delegate active in the town and Home Army soldiers controlled it. Chełm was the seat of the Committee only for a few days, and already on August 1 it moved to Lublin. Stalin’s objective was to have a government with both Committee members and members of the emigré government. On September 11, 1944 the State National Council made Bolesław Bierut the effective head of state. Bierut was the most trusted Polish communist in the eyes of the Soviets, subsequently President of Poland and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the United Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR).

The Committee, which the Soviet Union recognised as the only legitimate Polish government, was headed by Edward Osóbka-Morawski. On July 22, 1944, the Committee publicised its programme, known as the July Manifesto, which called for fighting the German occupier, and promised a land reform, as well as socio-economic changes. Another communist lie was the information that the Manifesto was announced in Chełm. In fact it was announced by Radio Moscow, and published there was well. The Manifesto was meant to legitimise the State National Council as a ‘provisional parliament of the Polish nation’, and, as a consequence, to justify the establishment of the Committee by the Council as ‘the legal provisional body of executive power to lead the fight for national liberation, win independence and to reconstruct the Polish state.’ The Manifesto proclaims: “In the name of the State National Council, the Polish Committee of National Liberation takes power on the liberated territories of Poland.” The following sentence specified: “Not for one moment on Polish soil liberated from German invaders can there operate any administration other than Polish. The Polish Committee of National Liberation executes its powers through the Provincial, District, Municipal and Commune National Councils and through its empowered representatives.”

The Manifesto recognised the principles of the Constitution of March 17, 1921, which was the basis for the actions of The Council and the Committee. Further on, it was specified who was the enemy and who was a friend of Poland. According to Committee activists, Poland’s territory had been occupied only by Germany, which after a lost war would be obliged to surrender some of its territory to Poland, as part of ‘historical justice’. The Manifesto also called for certain account settling with the Germans:

The hour of revenge on the Germans has struck; for the torture and suffering, for burnt down villages, for ruined cities, for destroyed churches and schools, for round-ups, camps, and shootings, for Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, and for murdering the ghetto. Countryman! Our ally, the Red Army, with its heroism and dedication has delivered crushing blows to Nazi Germany. The Red Army as an army of liberation has marched into Poland. The Polish Committee of National Liberation calls upon the people and all the subordinated agencies to closely cooperate with the Red Army and offer whatever help is needed.

The matter of state borders was mentioned as well, according to the authors of the Manifesto, Poland should have a good access to the sea and its western border should be the River Oder. As regards the eastern border, the Manifesto specified that it should be a line of friendly neighbourhood, not a barrier between us and our neighbours, and it should be drawn according to the rule: Polish land to Poland, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian – to Soviet Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania.

The date, when the Committee was established and given government prerogatives by Joseph Stalin, should be emphasised as it coincided with the moment when the Red Army crossed the River Bug. The western bank of the Bug marked the line beyond which ethnic Poles were in the majority, and the Soviet Union did not question the Polish character of the territory. The communists tried to preempt a situation where representatives of the Polish emigré government were present when the Red Army entered Poland because in such a case the Soviet Army could be regarded as an occupier. However, any form of a Polish government that would be an alternative to the London government, as the communist thought, legitimised the Red Army presence on Polish territory.

In Stalin’s plans, which were accepted at the Yalta conference (February 4–11, 1945), part of Polish territory was to be incorporated into the Soviet Union, while Poland was to become a satellite state under Soviet control, and ruled by communists. What originally had seemed impossible happened. Stalin’s policy towards Poland was very consistent. Already in the autumn of 1940, he gave his tentative approval for the creation of Polish troops, recruiting Poles on Soviet territory. A Political School was established, where Polish communists were to be trained. In early 1941, he decided that communists could join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and hold positions of responsibility. He effectively supported the activity of the Polish Workers’ Party.[4]

Anti-Church structures

For the communists the main enemy, apart the pro-independence underground, was the Catholic Church. The Polish Workers’ Party (from December 1948 the Polish United Workers’ Party) pursued its campaign against the Church through the structures of state administration: initially the Ministry of Public Administration, and from 1950 the Office for Religious Affairs (ORA). Despite reorganisations, name changes and restructuring it remained the chief instrument of surveillance, and operations against the Catholic Church, its structures, property, activity and ministers. The centre of decision making for all communist moves against the Catholic Church was a staff consisting of communist Party members – the Commission (Section) for Clergy Affairs.[5]

The ORA was established in order to subject the Catholic Church to administrative control. It was directly subordinated to the prime minister as an organ of state administration, with relevant provincial units, the sections for religious affairs of Provincial National Councils presidiums as well as district and municipal desks for religious affairs of district national councils (1950–1957). (The national councils were territorial organs of state power in communist-ruled Poland, and were modelled on Soviet councils).

The communists, who were taking power in Poland, did not hide the fact that the state would have a secular character, with Marxism-Leninism as the dominant ideology modelled on the Soviet Union. In such a model of state there was no place for public activity of religious organisations particularly of the Catholic Church (whose members constituted a substantial majority of prewar Poland), no place for Catholic kindergartens, primary, vocational and secondary schools, higher education institutions, theology departments at universities, Catholic holidays recognised as public holidays, and no participation of clergy in public life or in official meetings with representatives of state authorities.[6]

In the Soviet Union the activity of religious organisations, individual parishes and priests was controlled by state authorities. Every parish regardless of the number of the faithful, the frequency of religious services, the amount of money collections and renovation work, was taxed according to a scale determined in Warsaw. The clergy were obliged to pay most personal taxes, as the income tax on donations made by the faithful was set at such a high a level that no priest was able to pay. In Poland in the early postwar years a singularly prominent role was played by General Ivan Serov, an NKVD functionary, who supervised and aided the operations of Polish communists against the Catholic Church.[7]

The policy of ‘going past each other’

In the early postwar years, the communists could not afford direct terror against the Catholic Church, as they were aware that their presence in Poland was not welcome, and they held power by repressing the people.

The early postwar years might be called the time when the state and the Church were going past each other. In the early days of their rule the communists stressed cooperation with the role of religion in public space. But this was done merely for the sake of appearances, cooperation with Church hierarchs, and the presence of representatives of state officials in Church celebrations on the one hand, and on the other hostility towards the bishops and the Holy See, terror against the clergy and the decision to start repressions against the Church.[8]

As early as September 12, 1945 the Provisional Government of National Unity cancelled the 1925 Concordat with the Holy See, and blamed the Church for it. The Government’s resolution was unequivocal: “The Polish Government announces that the concordat between the Republic [of Poland] and the Holy See is null and void due to unilateral cancellation, by the conduct of the Holy See during the occupation, which are contrary to its provisions.” The resolution quoted reasons, which were a mere pretext: appointing in November 1939 (according to the Provisional Government’s resolution, in 1940) the Gdańsk ordinary, Bishop Carl M. Splett, administrator of the Chełmno diocese as well as appointing (in May 1942) Father Hilariusz Breitinger (a Franciscan monk) administrator of the Gniezno and Poznań dioceses, with jurisdiction over Germans living in those areas. Naturally, one should emphasise that the Provisional Government failed to take into consideration the complex situation of the Church during World War II on Polish territory, particularly the ‘orphaned’ Chełmno diocese, whose ordinary, Bishop Wojciech Okoniewski was abroad from the outbreak of the war, and the German occupier’s policy in toward Catholics in the Poznań region.[9] The media conducted a relevant propaganda campaign. Later, the diplomatic relations between the communist regime and the Holy See were also not very good.

Another kind, if the Provisional Government’s Anti-Church measures were attempts at a complete separation of Church and state. One of the regime’s priorities was the secularisation of schools. Before the war, religion was an integral part of the mandatory curriculum. In 1945 the communists declared religion optional, and two years later the number of hours was reduced from two to one per week.[10] A detailed programme of the parents’ free choice regarding the children’s religious education was outlined by the Minister of Education, Czesław Wycech, in a circular of September 13, 1945.[11]

At the same time, the communists continually emphasised their friendly attitude towards the Church and its members. Naturally, they did so for propagandistic reasons. With hindsight, these actions appear opportunist and the emphasis on cooperation and dialogue.

Initially (i. e. until 1946), the authorities acquiesced to the taking over of former Protestant churches and buildings in the Western and Northern Territories by Catholic clergy expatriated from those parts of prewar Polish territory that was annexed by the Soviet Union. The regime also permitted the construction of churches, organising curias, monasteries, seminaries, and parishes.[12]

Examples of the apparent cooperation of the communist regime with the Church come from the top. Representatives of state administration participated in religious ceremonies as members of official delegations. In provincial capitals, representatives of local authorities, in Warsaw President Bolesław Bierut, in accord with prewar custom assisted the celebrant priest who carried the monstrance during the Corpus Christi processions. Bierut ended his presidential oath before parliament (February 5, 1947) with “So help me God”.[13]

One may mention a few other facts. On October 2, 1946, the secretary general of the Conference of the Episcopate of Poland, Bishop Zygmunt Choromański, with the deputy minister of public administration, Władysław Wolski; were appointed by the legitimate Church authority, religious practices were permitted in military units; crosses were present in government offices and schools.[14] In July 1944 a group of prewar lecturers began efforts to reactivate the Catholic University of Lublin. Having the support of none other than Bolesław Bierut, chairman of the State National Council, already on August 21, 1944, the first postwar lectures began.[15] The local Lublin authorities offered substantial support to the university, assigning glass (for the windows smashed during military operations) and providing free-of-charge supplies of electricity and water.[16] University buildings were rebuilt due to the support of the local city authorities and the Ministry of Education.

However, time has shown that Bierut’s support, as the other anti-Church yet ostensibly pro-Church actions, was only a propagandist manoeuvre. To create the impression that the Church is present in public life was something Polish communists needed as one in a series of efforts to build an image of a ‘normal democratic Poland’. On the other hand, the permission to set up Church structures in the Western and Northern Territories was to help integrate them with the rest of the country.[17]

Anti-Church offensive

At a Ministry of Public Security Conference on October 13–15, 1947, Julia Brystygier, head of Department V delivered a paper ‘The clergy’s offensive and our tasks’, and recommended that the security apparatus “start comprehensive and systematic operations against the institution of the Church at the local level”. The main targets: the episcopal curia, the deanery council, and institutions most strictly based on the dioceses (‘Caritas’, which was and still is an international Catholic charitable organisation, established in Poland in 1926). Then she moved on to emphasise to making every effort – “as staunchly and ruthlessly – to prevent the encroachment of the clergy and Catholic organisations on the workers’ ground. [...] Place school prefects under systematic surveillance, chiefly through [our] agents among the youth.”[18] At the same conference the security minister, Stanisław Radkiewicz, presented specific guidelines regarding the campaign against the Catholic Church. He said that the Church was the “best organised reactionary force to oppose the democratic camp. [...] We must fight such an enemy as the clergy, because we deal with a most refined opponent, a master subterfuge and of all which is associated with the name Jesuits.”[19]

From then on, state security functionaries perceived the Church in a different light. While the first two, three postwar years were a time of reactive peace, after the speech of the head of Department V (which was responsible for combating all hostile organisations that threatened communist power in Poland, while Section V dealt with the surveillance of the Church) certain forms of repression were stepped up and, the years 1947–1949 were a time of preparation for a frontal attack, which was launched after 1949. One may that the first signs showing that the communists were bent on destroying the Catholic Church, were present already in Bolesław Bierut’s speech at a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party on February 10, 1946. He then suggested that efforts should be made to have a part of the clergy associate themselves with the communists. Stalin spoke in a similar tone to President Bolesław Bierut in a conversation in August 1949.[20] It had far-reaching consequences. In the following years attempts were made to disintegrate the clergy, as was the case in the Soviet Union in the first years after the revolution. Some priests’ promotions and advancement to more prestigious positions or academic careers were blocked; on the other hand the reconstruction of destroyed churches and other church buildings was subsidised.

Destroyed St. Alexander’s Church in Plac Trzech Krzyży, Warsaw 1946 r. (AIPN)

Campaign against the clergy

In the early postwar years the communists chose not to use direct repressions against the Church. However one should bear in mind that the first direct assault on the clergy took place soon after the Soviet-German frontline moved westward. Repressive measures were implemented by NKVD functionaries. That was the case on Polish territory annexed by the Soviet Union. Many priests of the Latin rite were detained in Soviet prisons on a suspicion of collaboration with the Germans cooperation with the Home Army,[21] and direct involvement in its operations.[22] The first clergyman to be killed by the communists at that time was Father Michał Pilipiec, who was tortured and shot in a forest near Głogów in the Rzeszów region in 1944.

One may also add that in 1946 the Greek Catholic Church was destroyed (delegalised) and its hierarchs deported to the Soviet Union, and its priests subjected to repressions. In this case, the reasons given for these measures as their justification was information (unconfirmed or false) about the priests supporting the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and their anti-Soviet stance. Those arrested were detained without trial in the Central Labour Camp in Jaworzno.[23]

One of the priorities of the communists’ policy in Postwar Poland, which was to secure their hold on power, was a complete and ruthless elimination of the armed underground. This campaign, in its religious policy aspect, included the attack on the chaplains in the wartime and postwar underground. Representatives of the ‘people’s’ state were extremely hostile to the Home Army, the Peasant’ Battalions, and the National Armed Forces, as well as to all those people who supported those and a number of other organisations.

Repressions were applied to those clergymen, monks and nuns who supported the activity of underground pro-independence organisations and even to those who were involved in exhuming fallen Home Army soldiers.[24] Priests were also punished for possession of weapons, ammunition and military equipment found in church buildings.[25]

Chaplains in armed underground formations were a source of strong moral support for the soldiers. They had a positive influence not only on the individuals, but on the internal relations within the detachments. They organised talks, lectures, religious and socio-political conferences. The weddings, the confessions, the regular religious services introduced a feeling of normality in the harsh conditions the soldiers were obliged to live in.

One may quote at least two examples. The first, Father Rudolf Marszałek, prisoner of concentration camps and a chaplain of the Polish Armed Forces, and after he returned to Poland, a chaplain of the Home Army and the National Armed Forces. In January 1948 he was sentenced to death by a communist court, and executed on March 10, 1948.[26]

Another outstanding priest was the distinguished Jesuit, Father Władysław Gurgacz, a chaplain of a small armed, detachment of the Polish Underground Independents Army (Polska Podziemna Armia Niepodległościowców), which fought against the communists.[27] Although he had a chance to escape abroad after elements of his detachment were arrested, Father Gurgacz decided to remain in Poland. When interrogated, he testified: “I did not escape after the hold-up of July 2, 1949, because I did not wish to abandon the members of the organisation and I wished to be held responsible as they were.” Arrested on the day of the detachment’s hold-up of bank in order to gain means to survive, he was detained. Several weeks later, on August 13, 1949 he was sentenced to death in a show trial, and executed on September 14, 1949. Father Władysław Gurgacz was the last priest sentenced to death and executed.

One may also mention Sister Izabela Łuszczkiewicz, who cooperated with the Home Army during the occupation, and later as a Rzeszów hospital nurse of charity, obtained medical supplies for the underground and help wounded and infirm prisoners escape from the hospital. In 1949 she was sentenced to 15 years and after appeal to the Supreme Military Court to death (trial – March 10–13, 1950), commuted to life imprisonment (trial – May 10, 1950), and amnestied on November 22, 1952 the sentence was further commuted to 12 years. In 1956 the punishment was suspended and Sister Izabela’s imprisonment was interrupted.[28]

Apart from chaplains of armed formations, repressions also included those priests who supported the National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe) or the Labour Party (Stronnictwo Pracy) in the years 1946–1947.[29] Various repressions were directed against those priests who become directly involved in all kinds of activity during the parliamentary election of 1947 and openly criticised votes cast for the ‘democratic block’. (The communists called themselves ‘democrats’ and used other semantic instruments in their distorted sense. For example, they branded the pro-independence underground as ‘bands’ or ‘fascists’.

Communist repressions covered not only the priest who supported the armed underground in any form. In the early postwar years, communists used repressions against priests who stood up in defence of members of the native population or those who had been forced to declare German nationality during the occupation. Another repressed group comprised those in defence of hierarchs and chaplains who stood with their fellow clergy members, which the communists ‘deemed Germans’ and who were marked for deportation from the Western and Northern Territories.

Those priests who stood up for persecuted people were in revenge, accused of collaboration with the German occupier and with the armed underground. The newspapers published articles that vilified priests, who were presented as warmongers. The Katowice ordinary, Bishop Stanisław Adamski, who defended the people of Silesia, tried to restore traditional religious customs in his diocese, and took a decisive stance about religious freedom, was in early 1949 accused by the government of high treason and collaboration with the Germans during the occupation. Representatives of the communist regime frequently reprimanded the Church authorities for the involvement of the clergy, especially the hierarchs in political life, for their ‘anti-state stance’ as it was called.[30]

There were more reasons for repressions against the clergy (fines, imprisonment). Among them, the priests persuading farmers to withhold compulsory deliveries, evade taxes, and to refuse to join cooperatives. Priests were punished for the contents of their sermons, where state security functionaries tried criticism of the communist regime and thus, according to a number of reports, anti-state activity. Party dignitaries and state security were particularly sensitive to any critique of Poland’s postwar borders, delimited at Yalta and Potsdam. Sermons to that effect were fined at best, but in some cases the punishment was imprisonment.

In the late 1940s, many priests were interrogated by the Security Office in order to forcibly obtain testimonies that put blame on others. During the interrogations the priests were subjected to psychological torment, and sometimes to physical violence. Interrogations typically took place at night and went on for many hours on end. They were conducted in such a manner and such varied questions were asked that the interrogated person could not understand what the object of the interrogation was. Interrogations often involved long waiting times or alternating interrogators, with each starting the procedure anew. (called the ‘conveyor method’).

In that period, several hundred priests, monks and nuns were arrested or imprisoned for collaboration with the Germans or the pro-independence underground.[31] Show trials were staged, the press condemned priests as ‘enemies of the people’s power’. The principal purpose of the show trials of the clergy was to undermine the integrity of the Church in the eyes of the rank and file priests. As Bogdan Cywiński aptly observed

the trials were prepared in such a manner that their course could appear to be a series of illustrations of a not completely formulated charge against the entire clergy and its ideological role in society. Accusations were levelled against not only to the rank and file priests, but directly or indirectly against their superiors. [...] In a number of cases, trials of curia employees or people in important diocese positions were a mere prologue to initiating investigations against the ordinary.[32]

This is what happened in the case of Father Piotr Oborski, a Wolbrom parish priest, tried in January 1951 in a show trial before the Cracow Regional Military Court. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for abetting the murder of the underage Waldemar Grabiński and leading of an underground army. He died on June 1952 in Rawicz prison.[33] Interrogations of priests were accompanied by elaborate torture, beating and psychological torment. Sentenced priests were imprisoned in the same cells as criminals; they had no access to health care and could not see their relatives or close ones. As Father Bolesław Przybyszewski recalled, who was sentenced in the Cracow curia trial,

at first it was all very polite, they offered tea, cigarettes, and then they started pushing all the way. If they were not satisfied with somebody, they would drag him out for interrogation several times every night. They were ruthless with some priests. [...] The state security was able to break anyone that is how they operated. If I had not survived a bezpeka prison. I would never have known that they used measures that could break anyone.[34]

Father Tadeusz Kurowski with a weapon fished out of the River Rudawa. The weapon was used as ‘evidence’ in the so-called Cracow curia trial, December 1952 (AIPN)

Father Bolesław Przybyszewski with foreign currency (on the table) confiscated during a search in the Bishop Palace, December 1952 (AIPN)

According to Zygmunt Zieliński’s findings, in the years 1945–1953 37 diocese priests were killed, 350 deported, 700 imprisoned, and 900 exiled. As regards monks and nuns, 54 died, 200 were deported or arrested, and 300 exiled[35]. The material foundation of the Church was being destroyed, it was fought against ideologically, and its ministry restricted.

One of the anti-Church measures was recruiting a network of agents among the clergy. In the 1950s most of the informants recruited among the clergy, monks and nuns and lay activists were blackmailed, psychologically broken or threatened. Thus the communists tried to secure access to information about the hierarchy, the clergy, ministerial plans, economic and charitable activity of Church institutions and plans regarding social initiatives. Informants were also a medium to influence the Church’s activity in these spheres. Ultimately, the objective was to seize control over the clergy, limit the dependence of the Polish Church on the Holy See, and to build a hierarchy dependent on the communists, and the destruction of the Catholic milieu.

Potential informants were selected at all levels of the monastic hierarchy, provincial superiors, procurators and economists, professors at seminaries, monastic superiors, heads of chancellors or scribes. Most often the compromising materials were proofs of contacts with women. State security functionaries believed that contacts with women always lead to sexual intercourse thus they tried to substantiate this claim, even through provocation. Also, information about homosexual monks or their sexual contacts with underage persons was used. In 1953, functionaries of the Cracow Provincial Office of State Security informed their ministerial superiors (based on informant ‘Osiec’s’ reports) about two monks who allegedly had immoral contacts with women and were suspected of homosexual inclinations; in the future this material was used to recruit them as informants. Informant ‘Osiec’ was their brother in the monastery.

Security Office functionaries took care to ensure that they met regularly with secret collaborators, on preset dates. They took place in safe houses, monasteries or on ‘neutral grounds’.

Sometimes secret collaborators would refuse to cooperate. Some priests believed that contacts with state security are contrary to their moral convictions. Some secret collaborators were eliminated from the network. This was done when they were not deemed very valuable for state security and categorically refused to collaborate. Such files were archived. In some cases such collaboration was revived.

The catalogue of repressions against Catholic clergy comprised a very wide range of operations of regime representatives, state security functionaries or Polish Workers’ Party members. One may recall that during the period in question churches were set on fire, vandalism of religious sites, and votive objects stolen. In the late 1940s in a number of regions soldiers, milita men and members of other uniformed formations were intimidated and thus banned from attending the basic ceremonies.

In 1948, nuns were being arrested on a mass scale for alleged tormenting of children and young people. Many priests were harassed for running Catholic associations of young men and women, based on the allegation that associations are the ‘breeding ground for reactionary activists’.[36]

In gaols and prisons nuns and monks who were detained, were interrogated, but even those that were not detained were also subpoenaed by the militia or the Security Office. In that manner the regime obtained information about the organisation of order provinces and monasteries, the size and the activity of the communities and the individual monastery dwellers, their schedules and their contacts with lay persons, The interrogations were conducted by state security functionaries and by employees of public prosecutors’ offices or the investigation division, and afterwards minutes were written.[37]

In the early postwar years, arrests of nuns and monks were the main method used by the security apparatus. The arrests were made on various grounds, but usually people were accused of co-operation with the armed underground, collaboration with the Germans during military operations, trading in currency, gold or stolen property, hostile statements about the communist regime or the Soviet Union, In the postwar period in the Cracow province alone, functionaries of the Ministry of Public Security, the Security office and the Security Service, arrested several hundred monks and nuns. Most of them were convicted and imprisoned.

The communist authorities tried all kinds of methods to break the integrity of the Polish diocesan and monastic clergy. In January 1949, Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz said in parliament: “any attempt to use the pulpit or the cassock to excite sentiments directed against the people’s state or to support the underground will be thwarted with all the determination and severity of the law. On the other hand, the government will protect all those priests who have demonstrated and still demonstrate their patriotism.”[38] This speech referred to gave rise to the term ‘patriot priests’, which throughout communist rule included all those priests who consciously supported the regime’s efforts directed at disintegrating the Church (the hierarchy, the clergy, and the faithful), supported the rules and were subservient to them; they also achieved material gains from their activity.

At a meeting of priests (former inmates of German concentration camps) in Włocławek on October 1–2, 1949, an idea was born to form a group of priests that would support the state authorities in their efforts for the development of society and the country’s reconstruction. Following up on this idea, the communists formed the Main Priests’ Commission of the Chief Board of the Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy, with membership restricted to former inmates of Nazi concentration camps or prisons, and who had the status of a veteran. However, soon the membership formula was extended to include any priest who reveals a favourable attitude to ‘people’s Poland’ and its authorities. Eventually (1953) some members of the Commission moved to the Commission of the Clergy and Lay Catholic Activists of the All-Poland Committee of the National Front. (Both organisations were established to drive a wedge within the Church, employing docile and broken clergymen, however neither reached a level of membership, level of activism or popular credibility that would be satisfactory to the regime. Ultimately, the Priests’ Commission was dissolved by the authorities in July 1955.

Another group that could also be deemed ‘patriot priests’ are those who in 1950 joined the national Caritas union, The taking over of church Caritas property frequently took place in the presence and with the acceptance of ‘patriot priests’. Although activity in a charitable organisation could be tolerated, the regime could not accept the fact that Caritas priests published the Głos Kapłana (Priest’s Voice) biweekly (from February to October 1950) with a circulation of 8,000 or the periodicals, Ksiądz Obywatel (Priest Citizen) (December 1950 – June 1953) or Kuźnica Kapłańska (Priests’ Smithy).

On November 4, 1950 the Catholic Intellectuals ‘and Activists’ Committee was established. It was initiated by Bolesław Piasecki, whose purpose was to gather a group of priests and lay persons that support the collaboration of Catholics with the communist regime. The priests who joined the Committee were also called ‘patriot priests’.

In 1953 there were some changes and transformations in the milieu of ‘patriot priests’, caused by the strong condemnation of this milieu by the Church hierarchy its being compromised among the clergy and its actions that were detrimental to the Catholic Church. On September 29, 1953 the Main Priests Commission of the Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy and the Intellectual Commission of the Clergy and the Lay Catholic Intellectuals and Catholic Activists were merged with the All-Poland Committee of the National Front.

The activity of ‘patriot priests’ in these organisations and institutions was far from being disinterested. Those priests that collaborated with the communist regime often were their full-time employees of its institutions; they enjoyed the ample benefits offered, social subsidies, and its sanatoria and holiday resort homes. They were more than generously granted state decorations, which underlined their social engagement for peace, for the improvement of the living conditions of the poor as well as society at large. Priest – academics were able to publish, obtain university degrees without major difficulties. ‘Patriotic priests’ could also count on the support of the communist regime as regards approval of ecclesiastic appointments or to receive a passport to travel abroad.

The Church and the rigged elections of 1947

The position of the hierarchs regarding the parliamentary election was extremely cautions. It was correctly predicted that the fight would be bitter and the regime would use any means available, as in the cause of the popular referendum, in order to retain power. The bishops had no illusions about the intentions of the communists. They were aware that a communist victory would result not only in the destruction of the opposition but also in attacks against the Church.

An important event was the Plenary Conference of the Polish Episcopate at the national shrine of Jasna Góra on September 8, 1946. It was then that the Episcopate entrusted the whole nation to the protection of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Two days later, on September 10, 1946, the Polish bishops issued an address regarding the parliamentary election.[39] It was composed of five parts and an introduction, where one reads: “our position regarding the election should be clearly defined in the light of Christian morality, immutable in its foundations, regardless of the systemic and political circumstances. The election is neither irrelevant for us nor are they a matter of mere state technology, but we should care as deeply about them as about each of our rights and each of our duties.”[40] In part one, the bishops explained why they take a public stance regarding the election; in part two they explained the relationship between election laws and a democratic state; in part three they wrote about the duties of Catholics in political life; in part four they listed eight electoral duties of every Catholic; in part five they called on the faithful to vote in the election, which was deemed the fulfilment of obligations vis-à-vis the nation, the state, and the Church. The bishops’ address did not mention the Polish Peasants’ Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, PSL) but made it clear who Catholics should vote for. (It was the largest opposition party that the communists permitted to run in the 1947 election. It was subjected to intensive harassment during the election campaign. In October 1947, its leader, Stanislaw Mikołajczyk, fled the country to avoid arrest, which triggered the party’s gradual decomposition until the communists merged it with its own umbrella peasants’ party [the Peasants’ Party, Stronnictwo Ludowe, SL). The official censorship office (Główny Urząd Kontroli Prasy, Publikacji i Widowisk) refused to approve publishing the address in the press permitting only a summary. The address was read out from the pulpits later, on October 20, 1946.[41]

Primate August Hlond and Cardinal Adam S. Sapieha tried to activate western public opinion with regard to the election. Representatives of the American and the British embassies maintained contacts with these two hierarchs and representatives of the Polish Peasants’ Party and the Labour Party (Stronnictwo Pracy, SP). The latter was a Christian democratic party established before the war. In 1945 it resumed its activity in the reality of ‘People’s Poland’, and was fought against by the communists. In 1946, its leadership dissolved its structures, and most activists followed the decision. Only a small group collaborated with the communists under the original name in order join a new party (the Democratic Party, Stronnictwo Demokratyczne, SD) in 1950.The western powers were interested in a fair election. Both PSL activists and the hierarchs kept the diplomats informed about the abuses of the Provisional Government, the repressions of the security apparatus, terrorising the opposition, PSL and SP activists and the rigged 1946 referendum. American and British memoranda submitted in Moscow and in Warsaw did not achieve much. In late January 1947 the US government announced that the Polish election did not meet democratic standards. Both the primate and Cardinal Adam S. Sapieha were very pleased with this reaction of the United States.

References on the radio to the Episcopate’s address were made in an election radio broadcast by Stanisław Mikołajczyk. Similarly, representatives of the pro-independence underground also suggested that people vote for PSL or Catholic candidates.

The results of the election were falsified in the same manner, and by the same Soviet functionaries as in the referendum of June 1946. Before the election almost 60,000 PSL activists were arrested. The gangs of thugs recruited from Polish Workers’ Party activists and state security functionaries, sometimes militiamen or soldiers intimidated the local population with threats of arrests, deportation or fines if they failed to vote ‘properly’. On a national scale around 200 PSL members were killed in the days preceding the election. On election day not only the PSL trusted observers were removed from the polling station but also election board members who were connected or sympathised with the PSL. Over 400,000 particularly PSL activists and sympathisers were disenfranchised. According to official figures, the Democratic Bloc (Polish Workers’ Party, Polish Socialist Party, Peasants’ Party, and the Democratic Party) won 80.1 per cent votes, PSL – 10.3, Labour Party – 4.7, PSL ‘Nowe Wyzwolenie’ (New Liberation) – 3.5, unaffiliated – 1.4. In fact, around 50 per cent of the votes were cast on the Democratic Block.

On January 31, 1947 Primate Hlond, Cardinal Sapieha and the Episcopate Secretary Bishop Zygmunt Choromański met for a conference in Cracow. During the conference it was stressed that the election was an “act of terror, fraud and lying; that is the general opinion on the election, at home and abroad.” Later on it was pointed out that the government sought the Church’s recognition, as it was perfectly aware of the enormous gap between it and society, and with the Church’s support it was able to achieve a great deal. The communists needed the Polish Church only during consolidation of power and tightening of the ranks. A mere several months later it was deemed a natural enemy.[42]

The accord of 1950

The hierarchs tried to alleviate the conflict between the communist regime and the Church that emerged in 1949. In order to halt the growing tensions, repression and restricting of ministerial activity, the Church authorities decided to enter into talks with representatives of the regime. At the same time, let it be stressed, the ruling group were still seeking the Church’s support. In July 1949 representatives of the communist regime, in agreement with the Church hierarchy, established the Mixed Commission, whose task was to elaborate the principles for mutual Church – government relations, and to secure the rights of the faithful. In February 1950 an agreement to that effect was signed by representatives of the authorities and of the Episcopate. The Episcopate committed itself to influence the clergy to teach respect for the regime and work for the reconstruction of the country, and to punish those members of the clergy who would take part in underground activities and oppose the state. Furthermore, the Episcopate agreed to take action with the Holy See intended at regulating the legal situation of dioceses in the western and northern territories. The government promised unrestricted religious education in schools and unrestricted religious education outside of schools. Guarantees were made that catholic schools would remain open, as did the Catholic University of Lublin, they would have the same rights as state schools. The government representatives confirmed that the Church had the right to charitable activities, pilgrimages and religious processions, as well as publish its organisational periodicals and books. Freedom of practice was guaranteed to religious orders and it was decided that chaplains would be able to carry out their duties in hospitals, prisons and in the army.

Initially, the accord took the representatives of the Holy See by surprise, particularly Pope Pius XII. In diplomatic language:

The Polish Church had made too big concessions. But all the doubts, particularly those about a favourable attitude to the communists, were explained in 1951 by Primate Stefan Wyszyński himself. Eventually it proved that the signed accord frustrated all the Episcopate’s hopes and expectations. Virtually none of the commitments made by the regime were kept. As early as April 19, 1950 the Office for Religious Affairs (Urząd do Spraw Wyznań, ORA) was established, and become an instrument of the regime’s anti-Church game. It was this office that was to decide about appointments to various positions in the Church. On the other hand, on May 2, 1950, the parliament (Sejm) passed a law on the confiscation of Church properties that belonged to monastic orders and curias.

Another step leading to a normalisation of the state-Church relations was the Episcopate’s acceptance of candidates for administrators to replace the removed Church administrators in the Western and Eastern Territories. The apostolic administrators appointed by Cardinal Hlond were removed, and replaced by priests less reluctant to work with the communists. In December 1952 the Episcopate condemned Catholics involved in underground activity and economic sabotage, which could be interpreted as a sign of deepening co-operation of the Church with state hierarchies.

Restricting the scope of the Church’s activity

The communist regime not only limited the number of catechists in public schools, but they also tried to abolish Catholic schools and to introduce into school a secular organisation – the Union of Polish Youth. In 1948 its members made the first attempts to write denunciations of Catholic teachers and demanded that members of the clergy be removed from teaching and tutorial posts. Furthermore; in the years 1948–1949 the press, which hunted monks and nuns employed in schools resulted in trials of many clergy teachers and pedagogues on charges of physically and morally tormenting pupils and forcing them to take part in religious practices. This was regulated by the Decree on Religious Freedom of August 5, 1949. However one should bear in mind that in principle the decree operated only one way.[43] Secularisation involved removing chaplains from hospitals, sanatoriums and prisons. In the autumn of 1946, the Polish Episcopate intervened with the communist regime about this matter.[44]

Primate Stefan Wyszyński (Fot. AIPN)

The new regulations were to limit the Church’s material base. Church property was seized including some buildings, schools, kindergartens, care homes, and hospitals. Catholic periodicals, publishing houses and printing presses were closed. The disintegration of the clergy began by differentiating its members. Those clergy members that the regime regarded as ‘positive’ were approved as parsons, parish administrators or other church offices. They also swore allegiance to ‘people’s Poland’. Those clergymen who were hostile to the policies of the communist regime were removed from their posts.

The Episcopate tried in vain to halt the secularisation process. Already on March 14, 1947, its representatives handed Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz a document in which they said that they were in favour of making the state a Christian state. In this spirit worked Primate Hlond and after November 1948, his successor Archbishop Stefan Wyszyński.[45]

Primate Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński strokes the head of a young girl; in the background: most likely people in a procession (Fot. AIPN)

In 1950 the communists made a spectacular move – they liquidated the Church’s Caritas structures and took over management of this organisation. On January 30, 1950 a new association was established, the Catholic Caritas Association, whose members were lay activists and clergymen selected by the communists. Under the aegis of the ‘new’ Caritas nuns were removed from care homes and kindergartens. They were offered the choice to remain if they agreed to co-operate. Nuns were removed from hospitals and sanatoriums, in spite of enormous personnel shortages.[46]

Virtually the entire Caritas property was seized: kindergarten, day rooms, care homes, boarding houses, kitchens and aid institutions. Stored food supplies were destroyed. In nearly in all education and care institutions a new administration was installed, clergy members were removed from their posts, especially from managerial positions. Over 4,000 nuns lost their jobs and thus their basic livelihood. Monastic clergy kept their posts, carers only in those care centres for the gravely ill, the mentally and physically handicapped, that is where lay personnel could not be found.

In the summer of the 1952 many schools’ boarding houses, and dormitories operated by church institutions were closed. Many long-standing scientific institutions, laboratories, classrooms, libraries and equipment were destroyed in the process. The seized boarding houses and dormitories were soon vandalised. The most painful blow was the closure of lower seminaries and their confiscation by the State Treasury.[47] By closing the lower seminaries the communist regime tried to deprive the higher seminaries of suitable candidates and thus significantly reduce the size of the clergy. At the same time, the lay authorities took over a number of kindergartens run by monastic orders and communities. By the same token, sanatariums and hospitals run by or belonging to monastic orders communities (mostly female) were nationalised. These measures were implemented based on the decision of provincial authorities, without the chance to appeal or start legal action. The execution was effective immediately and usually accompanied by appropriation of property or vandalism, sometimes by seizing stored food. There are known cases of desecration of chapels, their devastation, and removal of altars, paintings, some of them of considerable historical value. There were also numerous searches in libraries of church associations and parishes; publications deemed to be anti-state were confiscated, regardless of their publication date.

Another type of administrative measure, to destroy church milieus, were administrative punishments and the so-called surtax. Surtax was usually so high that it by far exceeded the value of Church property; in order to blackmail the clergy with confiscation should they fail to pay. The income of the individual priests and parish vicars, and even of those priests who were not employed in ministry, were determined not according to actual statistics but according to the number of residents in a given parish. The iura stole income (most often momentary donations by the faithful for religious services: sacraments or funerals), as well as the Sunday collections were estimated, typically overestimated. Delay in overcharged fee payment usually resulted in high fines plus interest and confiscation of property. This caused financial ruin of the individual parishes, monasteries and members of the clergy. In the early 1960s, the amount of taxes and fines were several times higher than, for example, the value of the buildings.

Already from 1945 the communist were gradually restricting the Church’s scope of action. One of the last measures in the 1940s was the Decree on the Protection of Freedom of Conscience of August 5, 1949, and the decree on the Changes in Law on Associations of August 18, 1949. The latter undermined Catholic associations as institutions independent of the regime. It enabled lay bureaucrats to interfere in their activities and to directly influence the election of their authorities and seize complete control over them. The Church replied by dissolving many associations and spiritual congregations with many centuries of tradition and global scope. Some time earlier, on July 5, 1949, the Decree on Taxation Accountancy Books was promulgated.[48]

‘Non-possumus’ and further repressions

On February 9, 1953 the Council of State issued the Decree on Filling Ecclesial Posts by state authorities as well as on the liquidation of those offices, which contravened Canon Law. Primate Stefan Wyszyński, in a sermon delivered on April 4, 1953 said that where the priesthood is held captive, there is no freedom of conscience and any attempts to subjugate priests to state authorities are tantamount to an assault on basic human freedoms. The primate said that the Church “must defend and will defend, even unto the shedding of blood, the freedom of Christ’s ministry, because this freedom means the defence of the freedom of your conscience, because this defence also means, at the same time, the defence of the depths of spiritual culture”. Let it be added that the primate always equated an assault on the freedom of the Church or of the clergy with an assault, on the freedom of the nation. In Cardinal Wyszyński’s teachings, the priests were not only servants of the altar, and their actions could not be confined to the temple. According to the primate, their duty was to teach the nation, and to be guardians of its freedom.

The restrictive measures of the communists again forced the Episcopate to take resolute action. On May 8, 1953 the Polish bishops sent a letter entitled Non possumus to the government; the document presented the Episcopate’s position concerning the damages and the repressions that the Church had suffered; the bishops also demanded restoration of certain rights and religious freedom.

On September 25, 1953 Primate Wyszyński’s, when the communist regime was asked to issue passport to travel to Rome for the ceremony of his appointment as cardinal was ‘removed’ as primate and arrested by the government. He was interned in a number of places: Rywałd, Stoczek Warmiński (known as Stoczek Klasztorny) Prudnik Śląski and Komańcza. He was released three years later.[49] The communist regime appointed the Łódź ordinary Michał Klepacz chairman of the Polish Episcopate. In December 1953, the intimidated bishops swore allegiance to the People’s Republic of Poland.

Two years before (in 1951) the following hierarchs were effectively banned from exercising their functions of administrators: in Gdańsk (Andrzej Wronka), in Gorzów (Edmund Nowicki), in Opole (Bolesław Kominek), in Olsztyn (Teodor Bensch), in Wrocław (Karol Milik). Others were banned from ministry in their own dioceses, among them: Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak (Cracow) and his suffragan Bishop Stanisław Rospond, as well as Bishop Stanisław Adamski (Katowice) and his suffragan Juliusz Bieńka.

There were plans to put Primate Wyszyński on trial. According to the investigation plan, he was to be chargeg with such ‘crimes’ as: “1) anti-state and anti-national, pro-Vatican and pro-imperialist political activity; 2) espionage, gathering and passing all kinds of information abroad.”[50] The objectives of this project were quite obvious: to destroy the authority of the Polish primate and the Episcopate and to disintegrate the clergy into two groups: priests who would side with the communists for fear of imprisonment or in the hope for certain profits, and those priests who side with the legitimate leaders of the Polish Church. It is still unclear why Cardinal Wyszyński was never put on trial. Nevertheless it seems that it did not take place for several main reasons: the Kremlin leaders did not approve; the calculation that the trial would not bring expected propaganda benefits; the relentless attitude of Cardinal Wyszyński and Bishop Baraniak, who would not be broken.

In 1954, the communist authorities continued their anti-Church policy. Fines for so-called ‘violation of public order’ (organising religious processions, funeral processions, or even renovating and decorating with flowers roadside crosses and chapels) were quite frequent. Another type of anti-Church measures was withholding construction permits for new buildings and renovation of churches and rectories[51] or for the purchase of construction materials. On a number of occasions the construction locations were changed. Violation of construction law was punished by administrative and legal measures. The perfidy of representatives of the regime consisted in the punishment being administered both to parsons (although quite often their guilt was not proven) and to the faithful, who were involved in the most pressing construction and renovation work in churches damaged during the war. Private entrepreneurs (such as owners of construction firms or owners of means of transportation) who became engaged in this work, were usually deprived of their professional or trade licences. They were also fined by courts or administration organs. People who helped in renovation of churches, monasteries or rectories (elderly or even young people) were harassed.

At the same time religious education was being removed from various types of schools. Catechesis was now optional and it was usually the last lesson on a given day. Secular schools of the Friends of Children Society were opened and ‘on parents’ request’ there was no catechesis in their syllabus, which was explained by their inadequate training as teachers or lack of a university degree[52] or moral abuses. The secularisation of schools was carried out in different regions at different times.

The resolution of the Council of Ministers of August 11, 1954 (effective October 31 of the same year) without consulting the Church authorities closed all theology departments at the Jagiellonian University and Warsaw University. Instead, the authorities established the Warsaw Theological Academy, The curriculum and the staff of the new academy were controlled and approved by state agencies, and the Church had no say in this matter.

Catholic publishing houses and periodicals were closed, paper supply was gradually limited, and censorship was being tightened as well.

Gradually chaplains were removed from the armed forces, hospitals, sanatoriums, and prisons. An Army ministry independent of the Church authorities was established, staffed with priests who collaborated with the communists, mostly ‘patriot priests’. Their activity in the armed forces had a purely propagandistic character.

Various types of public processions on public roads and squares were forbidden: especially on Corpus Christi, as well as funeral and first-communion processions. The violators were punished by administrative bodies, penal boards of the presidiums of the national councils; those who appealed against their decisions had to stand trial. The authorities tried to eliminate all manifestations of religious life in the parishes. Pilgrimages were blocked, and their organisers were prosecuted for violating the Highway Code, the law on public assemblies or sanitary regulations.[53]

All religious symbols were removed from public spaces. Roadside shrines and crosses were moved under the pretext of road widening, adding lanes or pedestrian crossings. Figures of saints were as rule, removed from buildings which previously belonged to Church institutions or monastic communities and also from kindergartens, hospitals, boarding houses, dorms, where state or educational institutions were housed. The removals were secured by state security and militia functionaries. Scenarios of all possible situations were prepared, as well as those of potential behaviour of ‘fanatics’ who could oppose these measures, and the entire operations plan was based on them.

At that time religious songs and works on biblical themes were gradually removed from radio programmes. So-called ‘secularisation’ of school curricula and textbooks was carried out. Public libraries were being ‘profiled’, that is they were to be completely secular, with no books on religion.[54] Atheism was promoted and glorified by Party members and activists of the prewar Associations of Polish Freethinkers. On their initiative of Association of Atheists and Freethinkers was established in 1957. Its chief objective was the secularisation of Polish society through popularising religious knowledge, creating Polish culture and ethics, and promoting a secular rationalist and materialistic worldview. The Association organised numerous talks, lectures, conferences and scientific sessions to promote atheism, a secular lifestyle, a scientific worldview, criticising religion and showing the dangers of clericalism.

One of the nagging methods of harassing the monastic communities was the constant constraint on contacts between the monks and the nuns and their general superiors residing outside Poland. Polish Delegates were unable to take part in general chapters (sometimes passports were issued in return for agreeing to collaborate with the security apparatus or for a declaration of loyalty). Official correspondence could not be sent by mail, which was usually confiscated, internal bulletins and directives were treated as illegal publications. Monastic correspondence was controlled by the security apparatus.

Parallel to the rising wave of destruction of monastic communities, the restrictions on ministry and teaching, the secularisation operation was in full swing. The press and the ratio portrayed monastic life as medieval backwardness, and schools and education centres run by monastic communities as a threat to the proper development of children and young people, and also the monastic educators as heartless individuals, not caring about their words.[55] A good illustration of such a portrayal of nuns and monks is Natalia Rolleczek’s novel Drewniany różaniec (a wooden rosary) and the film based on it. The novel was meant to ridicule and satirise monastic life, and expose the nuns’ alleged hypocrisy.

In the summer of 1954 the ‘X-Z’ operation was carried out. It consisted in the dissolution of monastic homes in the Western Territories, and in relocating nuns to aggregative convents, and subsequently to closed labour camps, which were de facto concentration camps.[56] The operation was carried out on the pretext of removing the German element from those areas. The deportation wave engulfed not only the nuns, who were deemed to be the ‘German element’. A labour camp for servant nuns was organised in the Benedictine Abbey at Staniątka. The nuns were transferred to the Benedictine convent at Alwernia from which all the residents had been removed. Similarly, the Dębica servant sisters were removed from Staniątki, the Friars Minor from Wieliczka, The Priests of the Sacred Heart from Stadniki. The removal of the Benedictines from the abbey that had belonged to them for 700 years (it was founded in the first half of the 13th century), the closure of schools run by monastic communities, which offered a high standard of education, and the destruction of farms run by nuns, all this spelled doom for this oldest Polish convent. Many works of art perished, and the library as well as the archive were reduced in size, which apparently was deliberate. More than two years later the Benedictine Sisters were permitted to return to the destroyed abbey. Another example of deliberate moves by the communists, intended to destroy the nuns’ heritage was the outrageous closure of the Sisters of Immaculate Mary at Branice. The convent supervised a mental hospital, had a large farm, where the patients were rehabilitated, and which was a source of income that maintained the hospital and the schools.

Summary

In hindsight, it seems that under Stalinism the Church had often tried to establish, at a certain level, a modus vivendi with the state authorities, made efforts toward a rapprochement, and even signed a relevant accord with the government (April 14, 1950). It proved to be, however, that the communists were playing their own game, intended to eliminate the Church from social life and deprive it of the function of the voice of conscience in matters of the nation and of the state. All methods were applied, including physical violence, murders of priests and arrests of bishops. The early efforts directed at destroying the Church (something proposed by Julia Brystygier and Ivan Serov) were in 1953 replaced by a programme to seize control over it and push it back to ‘churchiness’, and convince society that there was no Catholic Church in a socialist Poland that there were no faithful, except perhaps some backward ‘relics’. But the persecuted Church was becoming increasingly immune to the regime’s measures, while the repressions and persecutions only strengthened it. And it was the Church and not the communist regime that emerged victorious, which was particularly visible in the subsequent years of ‘people’s Poland’.

Farewell to Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński leaving for Rome for a Synod at the Gdańsk Railroad Station, October 7, 1969 (AIPN)

[1] The eastern border of ‘the new Poland’ was going to look as if it was determined by Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt during the Teheran Conference. It was confirmed during the Yalta conference (in February 1945), during which an enigmatic reference was made to the western border and it was said that Poland would “significantly extend territorially to the north and west.”

[2] During the first postwar years and the time of the Polish People’s Republic (Polska Republika Ludowa, PRL) deportations of people from native lands to post-German settlement areas were deceitfully called repatriations. The same name was given to the resettlement action to which the inhabitants of the Western and Northern Territories were subjected, being displaced deep into Germany.

[3] R. Terlecki, Miecz i tarcza komunizmu. Historia aparatu bezpieczeństwa w Polsce 1944–1990, Cracow 2007, p. 8.

[4] In order to learn more about the beginning and activities of the Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR) see: P. Gontarczyk, Polska Partia Robotnicza. Droga do władzy 1941–1944, Warsaw 2003.

[5] A. Dziurok, “Wstęp” [in:] Metody pracy operacyjnej aparatu bezpieczeństwa wobec Kościołów i związków wyznaniowych 1945–1989, ed. A. Dziurok, Warsaw 2004, p. 18.

[6] B. Fijałkowska, Partia wobec religii i Kościoła w PRL, Vol. 1: 1944–1955, Olsztyn 1999, pp. 8–10.

[7] R. Terlecki, Miecz i tarcza komunizmu..., p. 37.

[8] A. Dudek, Państwo i Kościół w Polsce 1945–1970, Cracow 1995, p. 14; J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego w Polsce (1944–1989), Warsaw 2003, p. 75.

[9] See: D. Olszewski, Z zagadnień religioznawstwa, Łódź 1988, pp. 132–133; J. Żaryn, “Dyplomacja PRL wobec Watykanu, czyli traktat o instrumentalnym traktowaniu partnera”, Biuletyn IPN 7 (2002), pp. 32–33.

[10] See: M.A. Rostkowski, “Kościół wobec procesu laicyzacji szkolnictwa w Polsce Ludowej”, Śląskie Studia Historyczno-Teologiczne 30 (1997), pp. 277–248.

[11] See: Okólnik Ministra Oświaty z 13 IX 1945 r. [The circular of the Minister of Education from September 13, 1945] [in:] Dziennik Urzędowy Ministerstwa Oświaty, 4 (1945), Item 189.

[12] M. Żukowski, Krótki oddech wolności. Pomorze Zachodnie w latach 1945–1957, Koszalin 2001, p. 79.

[13] J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego..., p. 85.

[14] J. Żaryn, Kościół a władza w Polsce 1945–1950, Warsaw 1997, p. 122.

[15] A. Dudek, Państwo i Kościół..., p. 8.

[16] J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego..., p. 64.

[17] R. Żurek, Kościół rzymskokatolicki w Polsce wobec Ziem Zachodnich i Północnych 1945–1948, Szczecin 2015.

[18] Quoted in: A. Dudek, Państwo i Kościół..., p. 14.

[19] Quoted in: A. Dudek, R. Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce (1945–1989), Cracow 2006, p. 29.

[20] See: A. Dudek, Państwo i Kościół..., pp. 8–9, 13, 17.

[21] The communists regarded the Home Army as a threat to their hold on power, and its soldiers were treated as ‘fascists’, who would hinder their efforts to Sovietise Poland.

[22] An example of that is the activity of a Capuchin, father Remigiusz Kranc, a legendary defender of Ostroh, protecting it from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whom the Soviet troops upon entering the city first appointed the deputy of the city’s chief but soon sent as an enemy and counterrevolutionary to Kolyma (see: R. Kranc, Z Ostroga na Kołymę, eds. W. Kowalów, J. Marecki, Biały Dunajec–Cracow 1998).

[23] See: Z. Wojewoda, Zarys historii Kościoła greckokatolickiego w Polsce w latach 1944–1989, Cracow 1994; J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego..., pp. 69–75.

[24] Among those repressed for conducting exhumations of the fallen soldiers of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) were two Marists: priests Eugeniusz Chajęcki and Zygmunt Trószczyński.

[25] A. Dudek, Państwo i Kościół..., p. 9. Much information on this subject is in: Leksykon duchowieństwa represjonowanego w PRL w latach 1945–1989, Vol. 1–3, ed. J. Myszor, Warsaw 2002–2006.

[26] See: J. Żurek, “Marszałek Rudolf” [in:] Leksykon duchowieństwa..., Vol. 1, pp. 174–177.

[27] See: J. Żaryn, “Gurgacz Władysław Jan” [in:] Leksykon duchowieństwa..., Vol. 1, pp. 76–78; D. Golik, F. Musiał, Władysław Gurgacz. Jezuita wyklęty, Cracow 2014.

[28] J. Marecki, “Pani niepodległa – siostra szarytka Izabela Maria Zofia Łuszczkiewicz” [in:] Niezłomni ludzie Kościoła. Sylwetki, ed. J. Żaryn, Kraków 2011, pp. 77–94; idem, “Priorytety polityki wyznaniowej w Polsce ‘ludowej’ w latach” 1944–1949, Glaukopis 33 (2016), pp. 222–223.

[29] See: A. Dudek, Państwo i Kościół..., p. 9.

[30] Compare: A. Dudek, Państwo i Kościół..., p. 16.

[31] The biographical entries of 814 priests, monks and nuns imprisoned in the times of PRL are to be found in: Leksykon duchowieństwa..., Vol. 1–3. For the kinds of repressions used in the years 1944–1975 against priests, monks and nuns shown in the example of Cracow province see: Represje wobec osób duchownych i zakonnych na terenie woj. krakowskiego 1944–1975. Leksykon biograficzny, Vol. 1–2, ed. J. Marecki, Cracow 2014–2016.

[32] B. Cywiński, Ogniem próbowane, Vol. 2: “...i was prześladować będą”, Lublin 1990, p. 88.

[33] In order to learn more see: D. Pasich, “Proces wolbromski 1951” [in:] Zimowa Szkoła Historii Najnowszej IPN, eds. Ł. Kamiński, T. Sudoł, M. Żuczkowski, Warsaw 2014, pp. 97–109.

[34] G. Straszak, “Świadectwo wierności”, Dziennik Polski, December 17, 1999, p. 43. See also: P. Mardyła, Duszpasterstwo w czasach stalinowskich…, pp. 89-92.

[35] See: Z. Zieliński, Kościół w Polsce 1944–2002, Poznań 2003, p. 62.

[36] J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego..., p. 98.

[37] Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej [Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance] (later: AIPN) Kr, 039/1, Vol. 3, Sprawozdanie z pracy Sekcji II Wydziału XI WUBP w Krakowie za okres od 1 VII do 31 VII 1953 r. Załącznik (ściśle tajne) [The report concerning the work of Section II of the Provincial Office for Public Safety (Wojewódzki Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, WUBP) in Cracow in the period from July 1 to July 31, 1953. Addendum (highly confidential)], Cracow, August 4, 1953, p. 103.

[38] A. Albert [W. Roszkowski], Najnowsza historia Polski 1914–1993, Vol. 2, Warsaw 1995, p. 156.

[39] In accordance with the arrangements made during the Plenary Conference of the Polish Episcopate in May 22–24, 1946 the text of this address was prepared by: Abp Eugeniusz Baziak, Bp Teodor Kubina, Bp Stanisław Adamski, Bp Stefan Wyszyński and Bp Ignacy Świrski (compare: ‘Protokół Plenarnej Konferencji Episkopatu Polski z dnia 22–24 maja 1946 r. w Klasztorze Jasnogórskim’ [in:] Najnowsza historia Polski. Wybór źródeł, Part 4, eds. W. Kozub-Ciembroniewicz, J.M. Majchrowski, Cracow 1993, p. 108).

[40] “Orędzie Episkopatu Polski ‘W sprawie wyborów do Sejmu’”, Wiadomości Polskiej Misji Katolickiej w Londynie 1–2 (1947), p. 5.

[41] See: J. Marecki, “Kościół wobec wyborów w 1947 r.” [in:] Koniec jałtańskich złudzeń. Sfałszowane wybory – 19 I 1947, ed. M. Wenklar, Cracow 2007, p. 157.

[42] It is worth to look at the interview Ksawery Pruszyński conducted with President Bolesław Bierut that was published in Rzeczpospolita (No. 322, November 20, 1946). Bierut expressed the authorities’ concern for the Church and its freedom but at the same time portrayed it as an institution that is old-fashioned and hostile towards “the current reality” (A. Dudek, R. Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce..., p. 24).

[43] P. Raina, Stefan Kardynał Wyszyński Prymas Polski, Vol. 1, London 1979, p. 341.

[44] J. Żaryn, Kościół a władza..., pp. 120–121.

[45] See: M.T. Staszewski, Kościół katolicki o konstytucji (1947–1991), Warsaw 1991, pp. 9–13.

[46] A. Szymański, “Akcja przejmowania szpitali wyznaniowych w oparciu o ustawę z dnia 28 października 1948 r. o zakładach społecznych służby zdrowia i planowej gospodarce w służbie zdrowia”, Studia z Prawa Wyznaniowego 10 (2007), pp. 281–324.

[47] J. Marecki, “Likwidacja niższych seminariów zakonnych na terenie woj. Krakowskiego” [in:] Kościół katolicki w czasach komunistycznej dyktatury. Między bohaterstwem a agenturą, ed. R. Terlecki, J. Szczepaniak, Cracow 2007, (Studia i Materiały, Vol. 1) pp. 135–164; idem, “Likwidacja Niższego Seminarium Duchownego Księży Zmartwychwstańców w Krakowie w 1952 roku w świetle zachowanych dokumentów aparatu bezpieczeństwa” [in:] Introibo ad altare Dei. Księdzu Profesorowi Stefanowi Koperkowi z okazji 70-lecia urodzin i 45-lecia kapłaństwa, Cracow 2008, pp. 921–949.

[48] See: B. Fijałkowska, Partia wobec religii..., Vol. 1, p. 69; R. Gryz, Państwo a Kościół w Polsce 1945–1956 na przykładzie województwa kieleckiego, Cracow 1999, pp. 239–240.

[49] In order to learn about the activity of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński see: A. Micewski, Kardynał Wyszyński, prymas i mąż stanu, Paris 1982; P. Raina, Kardynał Wyszyński, Vol. 1: Droga na Stolicę Prymasowską, Warsaw 1993, Vol. 2: Losy więzienne, Warsaw 1993, Vol. 3: Czasy prymasowskie 1956–1961, Warsaw 1994; M.P. Romaniuk, Życie, twórczość i posługa Stefana Kardynała Wyszyńskiego Prymasa Tysiąclecia, Warsaw 1994; A. Jasiński, Kardynał Stefan Wyszyński – świadek wiary, Vol. 4: 1957–1958, Gniezno 2000; R. Łatka, “Czy prymasa Wyszyńskiego można określać mianem realisty politycznego?” [in:] Relizm polityczny, ed. R. Łatka, Politeja no. 25 (2013), pp. 201–212; E. Czaczkowska, Kardynał Wyszyński. Biografia, Cracow 2013.

[50] Szkic planu zagadnień podlegających wyjaśnieniu w śledztwie przeciwko Stefanowi Wyszyńskiemu [The outline plan of issues to be explained during the investigation against Stefan Wyszyński], Warsaw, January 20, 1954 [in:] Stefan Kardynał Wyszyński Prymas Polski w dokumentach aparatu bezpieczeństwa PRL (1953–1956), ed. B. Piec, Warsaw 2001, pp. 119–120.

[51] It is vital to remember that sacred buildings and churches were also significantly damaged during World War I. Neither during the interwar period, nor after the end of World War II was it possible to conduct proper repairs because of the interwar economic crisis, pauperisation of society or lack of building materials. That is why renovation works were being postponed. Suffice to say, after the end of World War II the first repairs of many monasteries and rectories were carried out in the last decade of the 20th century.

[52] Diocesan and monastic priests (all of them finished higher theological seminaries which during the interwar period were treated as a higher education course) were accused of lack of higher education and not having a university degree. It did not matter that in the postwar period nearly all teachers in primary and secondary schools did not have university degrees either.

[53] J. Marecki, “Działania aparatu bezpieczeństwa wobec bernardynów z klasztoru w Kalwarii Zebrzydowskiej w latach 1945–1975. Zarys problematyki” [in:] Strażnicy sowieckiego imperium. Urząd Bezpieczeństwa i Służba Bezpieczeństwa w Małopolsce 1945–1990, ed. F. Musiał, M. Wenklar, Cracow 2009, pp. 395–426.

[54] It is vital to add that books written by authors who in the interwar period exposed the false premises of communism and abuses of communists in the USSR and Spain, and who criticised the postwar socio-political order in the countries of Eastern Europe, were being removed from public and school libraries.

[55] See: E. Kaczmarek, Dlaczego przeszkadzały? Polityka władz partyjnych i rządowych wobec żeńskich zgromadzeń zakonnych w Polsce w latach 1945–1956, Warsaw 2007, pp. 140–168.

[56] P. Raina, Losy sióstr zakonnych w PRL. Wysiedlenie–obozy–uwolnienie. 1954–1956, Warsaw 2004; M.H. Zając, Kryptonim “X-2”, Wrocław–Poznań 2004; Represje wobec sióstr zakonnych w PRL. Obozy pracy dla zakonnic (1954–1956), ed. A. Mirek, Lublin 2005.

Chapter 2

The Church under Władysław Gomułka (1956–1970)

In many respects 1956 is a turning point. The October ‘thaw’ completely changed the socio-political situation in ‘people’s Poland’.[1] The collapse of the system that the communists were building in Poland was a primarily result of economic factors that destabilised the political situation. The information, which the state security functionary Józef Światło, who had defected to the West in 1954, made public in Poland ultimately led to the dissolution of the ill-famed Ministry of Public Security. It was replaced by the Security Committee of the Council of Ministers. The Committee was short-lived (until 1956), and its remit was taken over by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This reorganisation did not reduce repressions, and the activity of the functionaries still concentrated on supporting officials of the communist Party, which retained its hold on power. State security, the ‘bezpeka’ was commonly referred to as the arm and the ‘shield and sword’.

The bishops took advantage of the situation and from the early weeks of 1956 demanded Primate Wyszyński’s release, the reinstatement of the eight removed bishops and five apostolic administrators from the Western and Northern Territories, and cessation of removing religious education from schools. However the authorities had no intention of complying. The political situation was in flux, while the bishops and the priests took advantage of greater freedom to revive their ministry. The most spectacular effect was the ceremony of renewing the Jasna Góra Vows on August 26.[2] The presence of several hundred thousand faithful at the ceremony was quite telling, it demonstrated that Polish society continued to look to the Catholic Church.[3]

The thaw of 1956

In 1956 the entire communist bloc was engulfed in a ‘thaw’ caused by open criticism of Joseph Stalin’s policies. The famous Khrushchev’s speech raised hopes for a reform of the oppressive system. The Polish communists were certain of their political dominance achieved through victory over armed opposition groups. Furthermore the regime felt no pressure from the intellectuals. Either by choice or by compulsion (mainly economic) they sought a different more human face of socialism. The communists’ position was not weakened even by the internal struggles, though they caused some fractures within the Party. Sensing the system stability, the communists began a ruthless battle against their last enemy that was still capable of fighting against the regime, the Catholic Church. The only way to defeat it was from within. The communists knew that if they could break the clergy they would crush the last bulwark that separated Polish society from a full acceptance of communism as the political system in the country. The detention of Primate Stefan Wyszyński was an integral part of the plan.[4] The only failure was that of the patriot priests, who were unable to break up the structures of the Polish Church.[5]

An important element in the system of attacking the Church was the activity of Catholic intelligentsia sanctioned by the state authorities. The stature of the PAX[6] association gradually waned, with priests distancing themselves from this organisation. Its Catholic members, however, did not wish to lose what they had achieved due to their compromise with the communists. They were prepared to co-operate regardless of the sociopolitical situation. But PAX had lost its monopolistic position, it was no longer the only legal organisation of progressive Catholics, because in the wake of the October thaw, Catholic Intelligentsia Clubs ‘mushroomed’ all over the country.[7]

The June events in Poznań[8] and the October thaw revived pro-reform sentiments within the Party. There was even talk of becoming independent of the Soviet Union. Yet the foundations of the system [remained unchanged], it only tried to project a more positive image. Władysław Gomułka, played an important role in this process. The workers protest in the Cegielski Works erupted in a transition period, between the time of Stalinist ‘errors and perversions’ and the stepped up ‘democratisation’ of the system. The protesters made both economic and political demands. These included a pay rise, retail price reduction, more products in shops, as well as free elections and ending Party rule. There were also demands concerning the lifting of restrictions on the Catholic Church. A similar mood prevailed not only in Poznań. October ‘56 brought a marked anti-communist revival. The Party, sensitive to the general mood rid itself of the old hardliners, associated with Stalinism. At the same time Władysław Gomułka was again elected First Secretary of the Party. He had been detained for ‘right-wing and nationalistic deviation’ in government buildings, and thus was also considered a victim of Stalinist ‘perversions’.[9] Józef Cyrankiewicz and Edward Ochab were also incorporated into the Party leadership. Nikita Khrushchev, having learned of the turmoil in the Polish Party arrived unannounced in Warsaw, and threatened Soviet military intervention. Gomułka assured him ardently that Poland did not intend to leave the Warsaw Pact or to break its ‘brotherly alliance’ with the Soviet Union. At the same time he stressed in his speeches that no changes were planned to be made in the political system, which he called ‘socialist democracy’.[10] The communists were trying to pacify the mood by changing certain trappings, but the core of the oppressive system remained intact. Nevertheless two tenets were dropped for good: collectivisation of farming and total promotion of socialist realism in art.

The primate’s release and regime’s concessions

One of the results of the October events was the strengthened authority of the Church and greater respect for it even among non-believers. The person who symbolised the resistance of the Polish Church against the communists was Primate Wyszyński. The communists tried to take advantage of this, hence the trip of two Party dignitaries Zenon Kliszko and Władysław Bieńkowski to Komańcza, where the primate was detained, in order to persuade him to come to Warsaw,[11] hoping that it would pacify the popular mood. On their request of the government, Wyszyński decided to leave Komańcza, his last place of internment, and returned to Warsaw, where he resumed his pastoral duties on October 28, 1956. Acquainted with the recent changes, he knew that Władysław Gomułka would agree to make certain concessions that were important to the Church. And that is what happened. The decree of February 9, 1953 on filling Church positions was repealed. The Mixed Commission of the Government and the Episcopate was reactivated. Ordinaries and diocesan administrators were reinstated. Before 1956 they had either been imprisoned or removed and interned. The authorities made return difficult only for the arrested Bishop Czesław Kaczmarek and Bishop Stanisław Adamski of Katowice. The church was to be granted a licence to publish newspapers. The matter of the concordat was raised again, but discussion was postponed. The ideological struggle between the communist rulers and the Catholic Church was symbolised by Władysław Gomułka and his ‘Polish road to socialism’ and Primate Stefan Wyszyński who fought not only for the freedom of the Church but of the entire nation as well.

Despite the concessions made by the authorities in the wake of the October upheaval, the future of the Catholic Church in Poland left much to be desired. But the course of events showed that the Church could not be marginalised and its activity would not be pushed into the private sphere. Władysław Gomułka himself, who often emphasised that religion was a private matter, called on Primate Stefan Wyszyński to calm the social unrest.

The regime was compelled to recognise the Church as an authority on social issues in the collective consciousness of the Poles. Crosses were put up in firms and hospitals, from which they had been ostentatiously removed in the early 1950s. On December 8, 1956 the government and the Episcopate signed the so-called ‘small accord’. The document outlined the scope of possible co-operation. The Polish bishops were very restrained with respect to these changes and had no intention to support the government during the election. On the other hand, the Church failed to strengthen its position. Theological faculties, which had been closed in 1954 and transformed into the Warsaw Theological Academy, remained outside the structures of state universities. The Church was not a legal entity, and Catholic organisations were subject to strict control, and after 1957 the communists regarded as hostile any Church activity outside church premises.[12] Although the end of the 1950s marked the growth in the number of religious periodicals published by Church institutions (in the years 1956–1959, 37 Catholic periodicals were published); nevertheless the revival was short-lived and later there was a substantial decline in the sales of Church newspapers.[13]

Even though Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński had no doubt about the character of the 1957 election, he encouraged Catholics to vote. In an Episcopate communiqué the bishops wrote: “Sunday, January 20 is the general parliamentary election day in Poland. Catholic citizens are conscience-bound to vote. The clergy will arrange the services so that all the faithful could fulfil both their religious and civic duties. No doubt this was the most far-reaching support of the Church for the regime throughout the entire ‘people’s Poland’.”[14] The primate believed that the Party chief Władysław Gomułka should be help in his efforts to stabilise the situation, not for the good of the Party, but of the entire Polish nation.

New Year’s meeting in Primate Stefan Wyszyński in Miodowa Street in Warsaw (Fot. AIPN)

The same year, the Znak parliamentary club was established. It had its ideological expression in the Tygodnik Powszechny milieu.[15] It was not large (merely five MPs), and naturally was in no position to oppose the communists in any form. They could, however, offer support to the government and thus demonstrate their presence in the parliament (Sejm). This club posed no threat to the regime, but it was there to confirm diversification of the political scene. The progressive Catholic milieus (Znak and PAX) would sometimes try to defend the interests of the Church, but never crossed the line and never criticised the communists.

In 1957 the Catholic Intelligentsia Club, a lay organisation of Catholic activists was established. Its members were very active and despite certain limitations new branches opened all over Poland. Finally four branches were registered: Cracow, Warsaw, Poznań, and Toruń. At that time, one more Catholic organisation accepted by the government was established: the Christian Social Association. Its founder was Jan Frankowski, who broke off from PAX. On the other hand, Tadeusz Mazowiecki founded Więź.[16] This organisation had non-Catholic members as well. None of those organisations were strong enough to have any substantial say whatsoever.

In 1957 PAX was permitted to establish branches all over Poland, and thus broadened its scope and opened the new fields of activity. PAX did not engage in any direct pro-government activity. It became a kind of buffer against direct support for the communists, and at the same time, made it possible to participate in the life of the Church. Quite often local PAX activists supported parishes in their contacts with the regime, helped take care of official matters, particularly with respect to the construction of new churches and the necessary renovation of parish buildings. This kind of activity fell within the margin of freedom left for religion by the government, and could be used as an argument to show the Church’s freedom in ‘people’s Poland’. Nevertheless, even communists assented or did not oppose, because they treated it as a manifestation of religious life.

It was a time when the Church’s authority increased, it was perceived as the last institution that openly opposed the regime. Around it gathered people associated with the opposition. But the Church did not have a big influence on the spheres of political activity of the opposition.

In his situation Władysław Gomułka had to take advantage of Primate Stefan Wyszyński’s authority. The communists, undoubtedly, expected that the primate would take advantage of the situation and raise the issue of Church rights. At a meeting before the primate’s trip to Rome in May 1957 Gomułka expressed his readiness to establish diplomatic relations with the Holy See. He implied that it was possible that a Vatican diplomatic representation could be opened in Warsaw, and hinted that a concordat could be signed, but did not propose it openly. But in the first place Gomułka sought ways to circumvent the primate, who never relented with the communists, in contacts with the Holy See. The last time Gomułka expressed his willingness to talk directly to the Vatican was in 1965. He then spoke with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, who deemed Gomułka’s proposal unacceptable, because Gomułka expected that the negotiations would be carried out without Cardinal Wyszyński. Another condition of the communists was to have a permanent Church structure installed in the Western and Northern Territories. This condition was also unacceptable to the Vatican.[17]

In a letter of October 27, 1956, the Episcopate also put strong demands concerning the government’s actions, signed by Bishops Zygmunt Choromański and Michał Klepacz. There were five basic issues. Primarily, the Church demanded the release of detained priests and closure of labour camps for nuns. Another point was the permission for the removed bishops to return to their dioceses and the abolition of the decree of February 9, 1953 on church positions. The last demand was allowing religious education in schools, and outside of them. Each of these issues was a pressing problem for the Church. Bishop Stanisław Adamski of Katowice was removed alongside his suffragans: Juliusz Bieniek and Herbert Bednorz. The most extreme example of communists’ brutality vis-à-vis the hierarchs was the case of Bishop Antoni Baraniak, the Gniezno diocese suffragan. After his arrest on the night of September 25/26, 1953 (the same night Primate Wyszyński was arrested), he was physically tortured during interrogation (tearing out fingernails, detention in a cold cell with excrements and without clothing) he was also subjected to prolonged interrogations (a total of 145) and starved. He was also physically tormented and forced to testify and denounce the primate as an enemy of the state, and as a counterrevolutionary. Other bishops had also been removed from their dioceses: Bishop Eugeniusz Baziak and the Cracow suffragan Bishop Stanisław Rospond, the administrator of the Cracow diocese; Bishop Lucjan Bernacki, the Gniezno suffragan and the Bishop Czesław Kaczmarek of Kielce, who was imprisoned following a lengthy interrogation (interrogated 223 times), and was sentenced by Warsaw Regional Military Court to 12 years imprisonment for his alleged collaboration with German authorities during World War II, attempt to overthrow the government, and espionage for the Vatican and the USA.[18] The Episcopate also made efforts to have apostolic administrators reinstated in the Western and Northern Territories.[19]

Primate Wyszyński’s visit to Rome and its consequences

An important point in the life of the Polish Church was Stefan Wyszyński’s nomination as a cardinal. Pope Pius XII announced it on January 12, 1953. Yet, the primate did not receive his hat until May 1957. He had put off his visit to Rome so that he could supervise the fulfillment of all the promises made by the government, although it was implied that the primate would not leave the country before the planned election.[20] Perhaps the most pressing pastoral matters could not have been completed, had the primate left Poland the moment he was appointed. He set out for Rome in May 1957, accompanied by bishops Michał Klepacz, Zygmunt Choromański and Antoni Baraniak, who came to the Vatican on an ad limina apostolorum visit. This visit was an opportunity to discuss the situation of the Polish Church with the pope and the Vatican dignitaries. Italian newspapers underlined the prominent role of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in the battle against communism. Some bishops wondered whether the primate would be able to negotiate the Vatican’s approval of permanent Church administration in the Western and Northern Territories.[21]

The Holy See cautiously responded to Primate Wyszyński’s declarations of the perfect unanimity within the Polish Episcopate. The Polish ambassador Kazimierz Papée indicated the differences between Primate Wyszyński’s and Bishop Michał Klepacz, whose opinions were close to the Znak milieu. The Holy See dismissed any notion of a deal with the communists. Thus the attempts of Polish communists to work out a modus vivendi with the Church hierarchy did not seem very commendable from the point of view of the Vatican. A concordat between the Holy See and a state ruled by the communists was out of the question. The Vatican dismissed any mediation between the regime and the Holy See. This was a role, which the communists envisaged for Jerzy Zawieyski,[22] a Znak MP, who accompanied the primate on his visit to Rome. Furthermore, Cardinal Wyszyński showed a certain reluctance toward lay Catholic activists, who could lead to a deal being struck with the regime.

Tightening the screw on the Church

Despite the changes in religious policy, there remained one problem, religious education in schools. The communists aspired to push the Catholic Church out of public life at any price. The regime’s priority was to remove religion from schools. In the 1955/1956 school year, religious education was completely removed from vocational schools, but remained, in a rump form, in secondary schools. Gradually the number of schools, where religious education remained on the curriculum, fell. The Church, aware that a complete reinstatement of religious education was not possible built its own extramural system of religious education of young people and children. They were taught in churches and in rectories. However this solution was not based on law and the possibility of religious education in such a form largely depended on the local authorities.[23]

In February 1956 the Presidium of the National Commission of Clerical and Lay Activists of the All-Poland Committee of the National Front[24] decided to submit an address to the state authorities. The authors of the document requested that catechesis points be opened in places with no church or chapel. They were also aware that there were insufficient clergy members to carry out catechesis in this organised form; at the same time they also stressed that it was necessary to hire lay catechists. The Church was aware that a sudden removal of religious education would not benefit the regime’s image, and it could turn into, as the address put it – “an object of fanaticism or a sensation played out by political propaganda of the enemy.” The regime found the demands impossible to realise and contrary to its plans.

Although the spring of 1956 did bring some unexpected changes in the Party leadership, the communists continued to completely secularise education. In order to discourage pupils from participating in religious ceremonies, (such as Lent or Advent retreats) schools organised attractive events. On the basis of the order of the Minister of Education of December 8, 1956, religion was introduced as an optional subject for students whose parents approved. At the same time, teachers who taught extracurricular subjects were no longer members of teachers’ meetings. The Ministry also reiterated that classrooms could not be decorated with religious symbols, and that teachers cannot take part in organised religious practices together with their students. According to the order, nuns or monks were banned from teaching catechesis. This decision affected 2282 nuns and priests, and as a result the Church had a considerable problem finding catechists.[25]

The state authorities made continuous efforts to make schools completely secular. A circular, to that effect was issued on August 4, 1958. The teachers were obligated to remove all religious symbols from classrooms and stop beginning and ending schooldays with prayers. The order was met with substantial resistance. Not only were crosses not removed but they were put up in new places. In the Warsaw province 41 per cent of crosses remained, in the Cracow province 11 per cent, in the Katowice and Bydgoszcz provinces, only in a handful of schools (2 and 1 per cent, respectively). In a number of cases crosses were removed and put up again several times. The removal of crosses from schools ended in October 1958. The authorities proclaimed a great success as they believed that schools were now completely secular. From 1958 onwards, the Office of Religious Affairs carefully watched catechesis in schools and especially that for children before First Communion. Equally scrupulous was the control of content transmitted during retreats or preparation for confirmation. More and more often one heard that students who attended religious education were torn away from other classes, and performed poorly in the process. Catechists recommended by Church authorities were refused employment.[26] The following year, 1960, was not favourable for school catechisation. Religion as a school subject was removed from schools by whatever means available, including by decision of the teachers’ meeting. By order of the Ministry of Education religion could be taught in school after all the mandatory classes were over. Ultimately, the Law on the Development of the Education System of July 15, 1961 removed religion from schools and pushed it into rectories. The teachers were to receive remuneration from the state, but in return for complete control of the classes.

The communists needed to remove religious education from schools because it was, undoubtedly, successful. Religious classes in schools were an opportunity for pupils to contact a member of the clergy, even those from atheist families. One could note that people turned to Polish traditions, which were often Catholic religious traditions. To be sure removal of religion from schools was a form of repressions against the Catholic Church and the faithful. The same should be said about the repeated demands to make available the lists of students who attended catechesis, which was not acceptable for the Church.

Faced with restrictions on religious rights, many people protested against them, particularly in southern Poland. The year 1960 was marked by three confrontations between the Church and the communists. The faithful played an important role in them: the struggle for the cross in Nowa Huta[27] the events in Kraśnik Fabryczny and the so-called Zielona Góra events. In Kraśnik, the authorities opposed the construction of a church and thus caused street clashes, with the militia destroying the provisional chapel and the demonstrators vandalising the presidium of the Municipal National Council. Twenty two people were put on trial, and another 34 were dismissed from work.[28] The Nowa Huta events had an even greater scale and repercussions. On April 27, 1960 the inhabitants protested against workers’ removing a cross from the site, where a church was to be built. First, a group of women stood up in defence of the cross, and then a large group of the faithful joined them. The authorities deployed riot police, which immediately began to pacify the crowd. The clashes spread through the entire town district, and many people were arrested.[29] A propaganda campaign followed. The Cracow newspapers emphasised that “the process of formation of the Nowa Huta working class was disrupted by reactionary and clerical elements, who tried to bring into the image of the new town the element of fanaticism and obscurantism.” In May 30,1960 in Zielona Góra people protested actively against the authorities’ decision to close the local Catholic Home. Five thousand people took part, with three hundred and thirty three demonstrators arrested. About as many were punished by the authorities.[30]

In the 1960s, the struggle for new churches was of paramount importance to the Church. Two new young bishops played a special role in it: Ignacy Tokarczuk of Przemyśl and Karol Wojtyła of Cracow. The former, assisted by his diocesan priests and faithful built one church or chapel after another and became engaged in the defence of inhabitants of southern Poland. Sometimes chapels were erected on private land of the parishioners. The latter, the Cracow metropolitan, exerted constant pressure on the local authorities regarding new parishes and permits to erect new churches.

Cracow metropolitan Archbishop Karol Wojtyła surrounded by sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, working with the monastery during the coronation of the painting of Virgin Mary of St. John, May 9, 1965 (AIPN)

The Church tried to oppose the communists’ efforts to establish permanent ecclesial administration in the Western and Northern Territories. On December 1 1956 the primate, based on prerogatives granted by the Holy See, appointed delegates with powers of residential bishops for apostolic administration on the Western and Northern Territories. The Lower Silesia apostolic administration in Wrocław was led by Bishop Bolesław Kominek. Bishop Teodor Bensch, consecrated in secret in 1952, became administrator of the Warmia diocese. The Sandomierz suffragan, Bishop Franciszek Jop, became delegate for Opole, while Bishop Tomasz Wilczyński became special delegate for Warmia.[31]

The authorities, on the other hand, faced a difficult decision: to withdraw support or not for patriot priests’, who performed various functions in those areas. But they did not. The government had an ace up its sleeve, The Church, however, did not have a legal personality, and thus could own no property, so the former German property in those areas remained state property. Whatever land or buildings were only made available by virtue of usufruct. This was a source of certain problems because such a state of affairs undermined the stability of Polish administration on former German territories. The Church had pointed it out time and time again. The matter was not regulated until 1971, when the government granted churches and similar buildings to the ownership of the Roman Catholic Church.

Another issue successfully resolved by the primate before his trip to Rome, was the matter of filling Church posts. The decree of February 9, 1953 introduced a legal order that was not acceptable to the Church. A new decree changed the situation as of December 31, 1956. It only required that the Church should notify a relevant office if new church administrative units were to be set up. The law stipulated that only Polish citizens were eligible for Church functions. According to the new decree the Church had to check that state authorities had no reservation about candidates for Church posts. Priests also were obliged to swear an oath that their actions would not be directed against the state.[32] Despite the fact the communists could exert substantial influence on the filling of Church posts; they did not use the decree to fight the Church.

The Polish primate proved to be a formidable opponent for Władysław Gomułka. Both deeply believed in the ideas for which they fought. At the same time, both tried to deprive the other of any possibility to influence society.[33] They met in person several times, and often exchanged correspondence. Neither would give an inch, being deeply convinced that he was right. At a meeting of April 26, 1958, Cardinal Wyszyński reproached Gomułka for continued surveillance of the Church. The Party leader, quoting the primate’s sermons, argued that the Church had become the chief force of the opposition. According to him, the Church was absolutely free in matters of religion.

After that conversation the primate realised that concord was impossible. Gomułka blamed the Vatican for this impossibility, but he dismissed any compromise himself. From this point of view the Church could exist only if it was totally obedient to the state.[34]

The Second Vatican Council

In 1959 Pope John XXIII summoned a council. The preparations began in November, in relevant commissions and sections. Modernist philosophy, particularly popular among the French hierarchs, heralded the course of changes in the Church. Some of the participants in the Council favoured reform, while others supported tradition. Therefore ‘progressivism’ and ‘integrationism’ were the basic concepts in the vocabulary of Vatican II commentators. Modernisation of the Church, the aggiornamento of John XXIII, was generally understood as secularisation and adjustment of the Church to the postmodern world.

The Council, one of the most momentous events in the 20th-century history of the Church, opened on October 11, 1962. The Council aspired towards changes, without heeding the consequences.[35] The Polish Church embraced the changes with a certain degree of caution, and the bishops’ statements were conservative and balanced. Notably, the issue of communism and the Church’s attitude to the Soviet bloc was never raised at Vatican II.

The primate, being aware of the importance of the Council for the Church, applied to the state authorities to allow Polish bishops to go to Rome. The communists used the application process for exit permits to gather information about the view of the bishops. In particular, they were interested in the hierarchs’ opinions on world peace and the cold war. Detailed questions concerned German revisionism in the East, regarding the former German territories across the River Oder that were now part of Poland, or reactions to anti-Polish statements. The authorities did not want any discussion of the situation of Polish Catholics at the Vatican Council.[36] At the same time, the authorities wanted to show much depends on good relations of the Church with the regime and only then were they inclined to grant an exit permit.

A total of 66 Polish bishops went to Rome. The following bishops took part in all the sessions of the Council: Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, Archbishops Antoni Baraniak and Karol Wojtyła, and Bishops Piotr Kałwa, Kazimierz Kowalski, Antoni Pawłowski, and Herbert Bednorz. Most auxiliary bishops attended one of the four Council sessions. Only ten per cent of Polish bishops did not attend Vatican II.[37] At first the Archbishop of Wrocław, Bolesław Kominek, was not permitted to go. It seems that he was denied an exit permit, because the communists did not want any discussion on the Western and Northern Territories. Also the Polish administrators in Lubaczów, Białystok and Drohiczyn, (parts of these dioceses were incorporated into the Soviet Union) were not permitted to go.

The most active Polish bishop was Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. He delivered a speech at a session of the Central Commission, whose job was to prepare the Council. On October 18, 1962 he was elected as a member of the Secretariat for the Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. On August 24, 1963, together with Giuseppe Siri and Albert Meyer, he became a member of the Council Presidium. Other Poles took the floor as experts; among them: Father Andrzej Deskur, the Dominican Father Feliks Bednarski and Father Bolesław Filipiak. Present also were Prelate Władysław Rubin, the rector of the Polish Papal Collegium in Rome.

Polish bishops were also members of bodies that worked on Council documents. Archbishops Karol Wojtyła and Bolesław Kominek were members of the working group for the drafting of the Pastoral Constitution, the Gaudium et spes. Archbishop Antoni Baraniak was a member of the Commission for Eastern churches, Bishop Franciszek Jop of the Liturgical Commission and Bishop Michał Klepacz worked in the studies and seminaries commission, while Archbishop Bolesław Kominek and Bishop Herbert Bednorz were members of the Commission for the Apostolate of the Laity and the Secretariat for Communications Media. The Katowice bishop also worked in the press committee. On the other hand, Bishop Edmund Nowicki was a member of the Administrative Tribunal, while Bishop Szczepan Wesoły worked in the Council’s Press Bureau. Polish bishops also took the floor during plenary sessions. They were particularly interested in matters of liturgy, sources of revelation, and the role of the Church in the contemporary world. Let it be stressed that Polish bishops expressed rather conservative opinions, and referred to the Church’s tradition. For example Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński proposed that Virgin Mary be proclaimed Mother of the Church; most of the bishops wanted to restrict the cult of Mary in the Church.

The Council revealed rapprochement efforts with governments of communist states. Emphasis was laid on their peace efforts, but no one spoke of restricted freedom in communist countries or of regime actions that were openly hostile to the Church. The reality of the Church’s life behind the ‘iron curtain’ was outlined by Bishop Michał Klepacz, who presented the problems that Catholics faced in a communist country. Primate Wyszyński wanted the Council to condemn communism but there was no such will among the convened bishops.[38] The communists wanted to play it to their advantage, and tried to juxtapose, in the eyes of public opinion, the progressive pope and the conservative primate.[39]

Catholic milieus that co-operated with the communist government never ceased using the Italian word aggiornamento in all possible contexts. The idea was that the reform proposed by the Council consisted in rejecting traditional religiosity. But the Polish Catholic Church could rely on Primate Wyszyński’s wisdom, which protected it from the dangers resulting from too hasty decisions. It was at that time that the primate’s authority visibly grew. It was also then that the path of the Church and of left-wing Catholic organisations began to part.

The Great Novena and Millennium celebrations

The events of October 1956 had a political character and did not translate into religious life. Religious slogans and demands that appeared at that time were rather a manifestation of rebellion and opposition against the regime than a true religious revival. During internment Primate Wyszyński had prepared a pastoral programme to cover a number of years, which was to cause a true religious revival and prepare the faithful spiritually for the Millennium of Poland’s baptism.[40] The primate’s programme covered nine years prior to the jubilee, and that is why it called the Great Novena.

The objective was not only to prepare for the Millennium celebration but also to oppose the secularisation of society and to revive the sense of national identity. In a piece published by Tygodnik Powszechny on June 1958 Primate Wyszyński emphasised:

Let us examine our conscience in order to identify [our] historic guilt, to repent for it, but we shall rise from our knees, to follow Christ toward new centuries, toward a new life. [...] It is of utmost importance to draw conclusions for the future to come. In the Christian past of the Nation we should see its admirable preserving power for the future of our Nation. [...] one should be constantly mindful that the Nation’s life is within us and ahead of us. To be sure, it stems from the trunk of the past, like leaves from branches, but a leaf could wither, a flower can drop off and yield no fruit.[41]

Poland’s Millennium celebration – Poznań. A crowd of the faithful at a Mass celebrated before a field altar outside the Poznań Archcathedral Basilica, April 17, 1966 r. (Archive of the Salesians of Don Bosco, St. Adalbert Inspectorate, Piła)

The communists viewed Wyszyński’s plans as a threat to their systematic secularisation of society. Gomułka seized any opportunity to criticise the primate and the Great Novena, being aware how powerful it was, and regarded it as a strictly political action. Party documents stressed:

The programme of Millennium celebrations prepared by Cardinal Wyszyński had one principal aim: a total clericalisation of the entire Polish society, and all aspects of social, economic, cultural and political life, without exception. [...] The Episcopate’s plans and the ideology of the ‘thousand years of Polish baptism’ built around them are clear: through a total, blind and absolute subordination of the whole of society to the Church hierarchy and to the Catholic doctrine, to create a mental unbridgeable barrier that would prevent the construction and the development of socialism in Poland.[42]

In order to divert people’s attention from the Church’s celebrations, the regime proclaimed the Millennium of the Polish State to be celebrated in the years 1960–1966. Coordination and preparation was the task of a twenty-one-man strong Party and Government Commission for the Millennium, led by Władysław Wicha.

Cardinal Wyszyński’s programme was a success. The intensive, well thought-out and well planned pastoral campaign was meant to counter the systemic secularisation of society. Cardinal Wyszyński presented Poland’s baptism as the birth of the nation. Such a historical narrative appealed to the collective imagination and become rooted there.

In Primate Wyszyński’s plans, the Great Novena was to help the Church reach all those who felt that they were members of the national community. The Great Novena equated the national tradition with the Catholic Church, which attracted everyone with a patriotic sentiment.[43] Interest in religion skyrocketed. Even among the communists one could find people who returned to the Church. There were quite a few who, for privileges offered, remained in state instructions but rejected the materialist ideology.

At the centre of the Novena was the painting of Our Lady of Częstochowa,[44] because Poles associated Jasna Góra not only with religious cult but with defending Poland and its character. The turn of the 1950s and 1960s saw intensified religious life. It was reflected in the number of people receiving the sacraments or in church attendance. Large crowds appeared to see the travelling painting of the Black Madonna. In 1966 the authorities alarmed by the scale of these events ‘arrested’ the painting,[45] and from then on only the empty frames were shown in Polish dioceses. It was a telling symbol of the nation’s captivity.

Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński at a Millennium celebration at Lubaczów, October 22, 1966 (AIPN)

The Great Novena also showed that the Catholic Church had quite a lot to offer non-believers, those who were not members of the Church. This led to a popular explosion of sympathy for the Church, which as a rule did not translate into increased church attendance, but it demonstrated how much there was in common, searching for traditional values or freedom aspirations.

Letter from the Polish bishops to the German bishops

One year before the Millennium the Polish bishops wrote a letter to the German bishops. The document was drafted by Bishop Kominek and signed in Rome by 34 Polish hierarchs on November 18, 1965. Undoubtedly it was a courageous move of the Polish Episcopate, because it encroached onto politics. Among others, it showed that the Soviet Union was not necessarily the sole guarantor of Poland’s western border. Politics, Gomułka believed, was the party’s exclusive prerogative, so he regarded the bishops’ letter as ‘another act of militant clericalism’.

The bishop’s letter played an important role in raising people’s consciousness, because it opposed the division of Europe by the Iron Curtain. Primate Wyszyński described its importance in a sermon of January 14, 1966: “This address may have caused a certain confusion here, at home, particularly among the intelligentsia, but in the international dimension it further enhanced the position of the Polish Church, improved opinions about the Church and, as a result of this document, all accusations chauvinism, nationalism died instantly.”[46]

The clergy displayed all kinds of attitudes to this initiative to the bishops. Most priests did support the letter but there was also a substantial group that contested the very idea of the letter. Even among the hierarchs there were several bishops who were skeptical about it: (for example Bishop Michał Klepacz) and some were downright critical, among them the Płock ordinary Bishop Bogdan Sikorski and the Gdańsk ordinary Bishop Edmund Nowicki.[47]

The propaganda campaign prepared the Party was aimed at the Episcopate and personally against Primate Wyszyński, Archbishops Kominek and Wojtyła, who had been involved in drafting the letter. Apart from intensified press attacks the regime decided to refuse to issue the primate a pass for a trip to Rome.[48] The Party’s position was presented personally by Gomułka, who spoke at an All-Polish Committee of the Front of National Unity on January 14, 1966:

The thing is that the Episcopate, and Cardinal Wyszyński in particular wishes to juxtapose the Millennium celebrations and People’s Poland. This tendency is manifest in the entire letter. [...] That is why we refused to issue a passport to Cardinal Wyszyński so that he shall not see this teacher, Professor Halecki, and so that he could not contrast the Millennium of Polish statehood and the one thousandth anniversary of the entry of Christianity into Poland. [...] the Church should not try to oppose the state. It should not think that it rules people’s hearts and minds. Those days are gone for good, never to come back.[49]

Today one can be certain that it was this initiative of Primate Wyszyński that began Polish-German reconciliation. But at the time when the letter was written and during the regime’s propaganda campaign the situation was totally different, because the accusations did appeal to a substantial part of society, as many people remembered German atrocities during World War II. However the Party leadership went too far with the pestering propaganda campaign, and thus it was no longer effective.[50]

The confrontation of 1966

From the beginning 1966 was marked by intensive efforts of the authorities carried out along two principal lines: the marginalisation of Church celebrations, hindering them and organising alternative celebrations that would ‘drown’ those prepared by the Episcopate.[51] According to guidelines formulated by party dignitaries, it was necessary to counteract the ‘offensive of clericalism’, aimed at ‘religious fanaticisation of society’.[52] Furthermore attempts were made to entice the bishops to make bold statements by organising various provocations. As the primate illustrated something the Kielce Security Service noted:

The authorities need such a situation so that they could launch a general assault on the Church and ban the Millennium celebrations. [...] Wyszyński drew the following conclusions: one should not be provoked but deliver pacifying sermons, which would help complete the programme of the Millennium celebrations. Wyszyński also reckons that the bishops’ stance vis-à-vis the policy of the authorities would lead to the people’s rallying around the Church.[53]

Much energy was invested in actions directed against Cardinal Wyszyński. The primate was the object a ruthless propaganda attack and in speeches of the individual party dignitaries. The fiercest attack came from Władysław Gomułka who in a speech delivered in April in Poznań accused the primate of being anti-state and irresponsible: “This irresponsible pastor of priests fighting our people’s state who proclaims that he shall not bow down before Poland’s raison d’etat, places his imagined pretences to spiritual leadership of the Polish nation above Poland’s independence. How blinded has he shown himself to be if he forgets the lessons of history, forgets who lost Poland, and who liberated it.”[54]

Attendance at the Millennium celebrations organised by the Church was far higher that at the state-organised events, which demonstrated that Primate Wyszyński had won the battle for Polish souls. The Office of Religious Affairs summed up the celebrations as follows:

The celebrations of the Millennium of Poland’s baptism in Poznań, the Chrobry Bridge, April 17, 1966.

Apart from this sanctimonious cult-of-Mary aspect, it is a fact that the Millennium slogans found substantial resonance among believers, especially those concerning ethical and social issues [...] The Millennium celebrations showed with total clarity that any attempts at administrative restrictions of the Church fall flat. What is more they sometimes turn into a direct stimulus for intensified religiosity.[55]

The celebrations of the Millennium of Poland’s baptism in Cracow. In procession from the left: Archbishop Antoni Baraniak, Archbishop Karol Wojtyła, later Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Bolesław Kominek, later Cardinal and Wrocław metropolitan, May 7–8, 1966 (Archive Poznań Archdiocese)

Primate Wyszyński said “the Church’s Millennium celebrations went better than we had expected; the bishops ordinaries are growing in stature.”[56]

Jan Żaryn aptly summarised the effect of the Millennium celebrations organised by Cardinal Wyszyński and the Polish Episcopate:

The Millennium celebrations, despite the authorities’ valiant attempts did not lose their character of great demonstrations of a religious and moral renewal of Poles. In accordance with the call of the Millennium Primate, the Millennium gave rise to a new generation of Poles, who could not be torn away from away from the faith of their ancestors, the Church, or the history of the Nation. The Fruit of the Great Novena, and the Millennium of Poland’s Baptism was ‘Solidarity’ a ten-million strong social movement that owes its birth to workers’ strikes. They were then accompanied by the cross, the holy mass, and a portrait of John Paul II.[57]

Church administration on Western and Northern Territories

In negotiations between the state and the Church, a frequent motif was the establishment of a permanent Church administration on the former German territories. Primate Wyszyński’s solutions, i.e. the appointment of diocese administrators, were temporary. The communist regime took advantage of it, claiming that the Catholic Church supported German revisionists who aspired to sever the regained territories from Poland. The attacks were stepped up after the bishops’ letter was publicised. The government of West Germany did not exactly hurry with gestures of reconciliation with Poland, and Gomułka’s stance was thus unequivocally hostile toward the FGR. Thus the bishops’ letter became a pretext for tightening policy toward the Church and a valiant propaganda campaign against it.[58] The situation in West Germany changed in 1969 when the Social-Democrats took power. When Cardinal Wyszyński left for Rome in December 1969, he presented a document (signed by 56 bishops), concerning the issues of Church administration on former German territories. The only signature missing was that of Cardinal Wojtyła, who was abroad at that time. The pope further assured that his actions would be delicate and balanced.[59] The controversy about the western Polish border with Germany ended on December 7, 1970, which confirmed the borderline on the Oder and Neisse rivers.

As the communist regime carried out its strict policy toward the Church, Pope Paul VI made a decision that no one expected, not even the Polish bishops. On March 23, 1967, the Holy Father appointed apostolic administrators for the Western and Northern Territories, with seats in: Wrocław, Gorzów, Opole and Olsztyn. This decision changed the legal situation of the Church in this part of Poland. The Church leaders in those areas ceased to be vicars general, appointed by the primate and totally dependent on him. The position of administrator general gave the same rights as ordinaries had, including direct subordination to the pope. In the future, when the western border was settled, the administrative districts could become dioceses. This was not an easy issue to solve, because the new units of Church administration would need to replace the German dioceses, which were covered by the 1933 concordat with the German Reich.

The new situation on the Western and Northern Territories, which was a result of administrative changes, did not alter the restrictions imposed on the Church by the state. That is why the Episcopate prohibited registration of catechetic points and keeping inventory books, and took the responsibility upon itself. Such an attitude of the Episcopate also enjoyed the support of lay Catholics, who preferred to sustain the costs of fines imposed on priests than let the priests register catechetic points and inventory books with the communist authorities.

Cardinal Wyszyński, as someone who had real influence on the Polish Church, was constantly harassed by the regime. When in 1967 an Episcopal synod was to convene in Rome, Polish hierarchs chose the delegates. All received passports, including Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, Bishop Piotr Kałwa and Archbishop Bolesław Kominek. Only Primate Wyszyński was refused passport. In this situation all the Polish delegates decided not to take part in the synod.

What needed to be regulated was the matter of the Church’s material basis on the Western and Northern Territories. The existing state of affairs led to constant pressure put on the Church and destabilised pastoral work. Following the ratification of the Polish – German treaty on May 17, 1972, Cardinal Wyszyński asked the pope for a new administrative division for the Polish Church. On June 28, 1972, the pope promulgated the bulla Episcoporum Poloniae coetus, which established three new dioceses and their ordinaries according to the primate’s request. Unexpected reservations were submitted by the Polish government. They did not agree to a division of the Gorzów diocese. It seems, however, that it was merely a pretext for interference in the staffing policy of the Church.[60]

The events of March ’68 and December ’70

The last three years of the 1960s were marked by two crises: March ’68 and December ’70. In both cases the Church showed restraint. As regards the March events the primate thought that they were a result of factional fighting within the Party and therefore the Church should steer clear of in the conflict.[61] Ultimately the Episcopate supported the Znak MPs’ position and issued a communiqué that was rather mild in tone with regard to the regime, but expressed solidarity with the protesting students. At the same time it sent a letter to Prime Minister Cyrankiewicz, with the words:

The rubber baton is never an argument in a free society; it brings to mind the worst kinds of associations, and mobilises public opinion against the established order. State authorities cannot replace reason and justice with the rubber baton. [...] Guided by care and for the sake of unity and the Nation’s brotherhood [...] we demand:

1. The release of young people detained in prisons and gaols.

2. Restrain the drastic interrogation methods and punishment, news of which is reaching society.

3. Influence the press to inform public opinion truthfully or, at least, avoid it irritating the young and the rest of society.

4. Exert effective influence on the security services not to use anachronistic means of repression, so much compromised in our Nation’s memory.[62]

Nonetheless, the authorities had a favourable view of the Church’s restrained stance, and for that reason, after 1968, anti-Church policy was slightly relaxed. It was also a result of Gomułka’s weakened position and he could no longer afford an active fight against the Church.[63]

The Episcopate’s reaction to the revolt on the Baltic seaboard in December 1970 was rather restrained.[64] Afraid of Soviet armed intervention, Primate Wyszyński ordered the withdrawal of an Episcopate’s letter, which explicitly criticised the government’s social policy (only Bishop Tokarczuk failed to comply, but even he appealed for peace). A decisive majority of priests, as of the bishops, kept restraint. In a document of the Szczecin Department of Religious Affairs one reads: “Many priests of their own initiative appealed to their pupils for peace and order. The words spoken were so unheard of and shocking for the people that some priests were accused of being communists.” The attitude of the entire clergy stemmed from care for society and from the desire to prevent further intensification of social tension. Bishop Edmund Nowicki of Gdańsk ordered the priests to mediate and collect information about the circumstances of the events. In those days the priests in the cities on the northern seaboard were close to the people, carrying out their pastoral duties for the families of wounded and murdered shipyard workers and taking part in the funerals.[65] Father Henryk Jankowski recalled: “I was at those funerals. One of them stuck in my memory particularly deeply, that of Mr [Kazimierz] Stojecki, who had been run over by a tank, near the railway station. I anointed those men by the gate. It was so dramatic, shocking scenes in those days, but they did not scare me off the streets.”

Summary

The liberalisation of the regime’s policy in 1956 did not mean that the communists renounced their principal objective, being the marginalisation of the social standing of the Church. This objective was consistently pursued in Władysław Gomułka’s time. However the regime decided to change the methods, focusing on administrative and fiscal warfare against the clergy. The 1960s also saw the regime’s policy of ‘differentiating’ the bishops according to their attitude to the regime and disintegrating the clergy. The priority was to stir conflicts among the bishops, particularly among the highest hierarchs. These efforts were a total failure, because the Episcopate remained united. The regime also lost the battle for the souls of the Poles, as proved by the success of the Great Novena and Millennium celebrations. Not only did the Church keep its social position, but even strengthened it and eventually the authorities more and more often had to take into consideration the opinion of the Polish bishops.

Operational surveillance in front of the Cracow curia during the first pilgrimage of John Paul II to Poland, (Security Service operational photograph), June 9, 1979 (AIPN)

[1] October 1956 saw profound changes in the communist system in Poland. The regime no longer carried out mass repressions, intended for a physical liquidation of political opponents.

[2] On the 300th anniversary of the Lvov Vows by King John II Kasimir (August 26, 1956), the vows were ceremonially renewed, and the act was called The Jasna Góra Vows of the Nation. Over five hundred thousand faithful took part (one million, according to some estimates). The text of the oath was drafted by the interned Primate Wyszyński, and read out by Bishop Michał Klepacz. Symbolically a chair for the detained primate was placed on an elevated stand.

[3] Jerzy Eisler emphasised: “Whichever way [...] you look at the whole ceremony, there is no doubt that it was not only a huge personal success of Cardinal Wyszyński but also a significant moment in the history of Catholicism in Poland”, J. Eisler, “Pusty tron” [in:] idem, Co nam zostało z tamtych lat. Dziedzictwo PRL, Warsaw 2016, p. 198.

[4] P. Raina, Cele polityki władz PRL wobec Watykanu. Tajne dokumenty 1967–1989, Warsaw 2001, pp. 27–28.

[5] H. Dominiczak, Organy bezpieczeństwa w PRL 1944–1990. Rozwój i działalność w świetle dokumentów MSW, Warszawa 1997, p. 131. Cardinal Wyszyński was unequivocally against patriot priests – see: Stefan kardynał Wyszyński prymas Polski w dokumentach aparatu bezpieczeństwa PRL (1953–1956), ed. B. Piec, Warsaw 2001, p. 179.

[6] PAX was an organisation of lay Catholics, controlled by the communists, whose purpose was to cause disintegration of the Church from the inside.

[7] In order to learn about the PAX Association see: A. Dudek, G. Pytel, Bolesław Piasecki. Próba biografii politycznej, London 1990; Kalendarium PAX 1989–1992, Warsaw 1992; Komu służył PAX, ed. S. Bober, Warsaw 2008.

[8] In June 1956 the first general strike in communist Poland took place in Poznań, accompanied by massive street demonstrations, which were violently suppressed by the army and the militia. There were 58 dead and at least 274 wounded. In Poland these events are called ‘the Poznań rebellion’ or the ‘Poznań uprising’.

[9] Władysław Gomułka was being isolated in the years 1951–1954. See: R. Spałek, Komuniści przeciw komunistom. Poszukiwanie wroga wewnętrznego w kierownictwie partii komunistycznej w Polsce w latach 1948–1956, Warsaw 2014.

[10] J. Topolski, Polska dwudziestego wieku 1914–1999, London 1988, pp. 185–187.

[11] S. Wyszyński, Zapiski więzienne, Paris 1982, p. 253.

[12] Ł. Marek, “‘Oni atakują, my się bronimy.’ Stosunki Państwo–Kościół w latach 1956–1970” [in:] Stosunki Państwo–Kościół w Polsce 1944–2010. Studia i materiały, ed. R. Łatka, Cracow 2013, p. 44.

[13] Bibliografia katolickich czasopism religijnych w Polsce 1945–1989, ed. D. Wilegat, Lublin 1996.

[14] A. Dudek, R. Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce..., pp. 115–116; Z. Zieliński, Educatrix et Advocata. Wychowawca i obrońca. Miejsce Kościoła w dziejach Narodu, Lublin 2015, pp. 230–236.

[15] A periodical of the Catholic intelligentsia, founded in 1945 by Cardinal Adam Sapieha. During the communist rule, it was edited by a board led by Jerzy Turowicz. The weekly opted for cooperation of the Catholics with the communists. From 1976, a substantial part of the staff and associated became engaged in opposition activity. The Znak parliamentary circle was formed after Gomułka’s rise to power, and its members declared support for the new Party chief, and at the same time made efforts (mostly failed) to secure religious freedom.

[16] A periodical of left-wing lay Catholics, who believed that it was possible to combine Catholicism with socialist ideas, after Emmanuel Mournier, published in Warsaw from 1958. Under communist rule, the head of the editorial staff was Tadeusz Mazowiecki. The regime treated it as a handy tool to combat the Polish Church.

[17] Z. Zieliński, Kościół w Polsce 1944–2007, Poznań 2009, pp. 196–198.

[18] R. Gryz, “Kaczmarek Czesław” [in:] Leksykon duchowieństwa represjonowanego w PRL w latach 1945–1989, ed. J. Myszor, Warsaw 2002, pp. 101–104 (bibliography there); compare with: Wokół procesu biskupa kieleckiego Czesława Kaczmarka. Wspomnienia nazaretanki s. Izabelli Machowskiej, ed. T. Domański, D. Kozieł, Kielce 2013.

[19] P. Raina, Kościół katolicki a państwo w świetle dokumentów 1945–1989, Vol. 1, Poznań 1994, pp. 565–567.

[20] J. Żaryn, Kościół w Polsce w latach przełomu (1953–1958). Relacje ambasadora RP przy Stolicy Apostolskiej, Warsaw, pp. 116, 122.

[21] Bishop Michał Klepacz appealed for maintaining good relationship with the communists. The primate, however, thought it is more important to keep the unity within the Church (see: A. Grajewski, Kompleks Judasza. Kościół zraniony. Chrześcijanie w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej między oporem a kolaboracją, Poznań 1999, p. 191; R. Łatka, Czy prymasa Wyszyńskiego..., pp. 201–208).

[22] In order to learn about the life and activity of Jerzy Zawieyski see: J. Siedlecka, Obława. Losy pisarzy represjonowanych, Warsaw 2005; B. Tyszkiewicz, “Naiwny i heroiczny. Jerzy Zawieyski jako mediator pomiędzy kardynałem Wyszyńskim a Władysławem Gomułką”, Zeszyty Historyczne 156 (2006), pp. 40–102; J. Zawieyski, Dzienniki, Vol. 1:. Wybór z lat 1955–1959, Warsaw 2011; M. Korczyńska, Jerzy Zawieyski. Biografia humanistyczna 1902–1969, Toruń 2011.

[23] H. Konopka, Religia w szkołach Polski Ludowej. Sprawa nauczania religii w polityce państwa (1944–1961), Białystok 1997, p. 175.

[24] An organisation of priests collaborating with the communist regime, which from 1955 was an umbrella for several similar organisations, used by the authorities to disintegrate the Polish Church.

[25] A. Dudek, R. Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce..., p. 149.

[26] List sekretarza Episkopatu b. Z. Choromańskiego do Ministra Oświaty W. Bieńkowskiego w sprawie metod likwidacji nauki religii [The letter of the secretary of the Episcopate, Bishop Z. Choromański, to the Minister of Education, W. Bieńkowski, concerning the methods of the removal of religious education], April 4, 1959 r. [in:] P. Raina, Kościół katolicki a państwo w świetle dokumentów 1945–1989..., p. 652.

[27] Nowa Huta near Cracow was built as a housing development for the workers of the nearby steel mill. It was designed to be a model socialist urban development, “a city without God”, with no churches. On April 27, 1960 riots erupted to protest against the removal of a cross that marked the site for a future church to be built there. Thousands of people who defended the symbol of Christianity “in a city without God”, were attacked by the riot police, which was unable to quench the resistance of the people of Nowa Huta. Over 500 people were arrested. Nowa Huta was designed to be a model socialist urban development, “a city without God”, with no churches.

[28] J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego..., p. 197.

[29] A. Dudek, R. Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce..., pp. 170–171.

[30] Konflikt o Dom Katolicki w Zielonej Górze w dniu 30 maja 1960 roku w świetle dokumentów, ed. T. Dzwonkowski, Poznań 2006; K. Krasowski, “Między Poznaniem a Wybrzeżem”, Niedziela. Edycja Zielonogórsko-Gorzowska 20 (2015), pp. 4–5.

[31] P. Nitecki, Biskupi Kościoła w Polsce. Słownik biograficzny, Warsaw 1992, pp. 95–96; J. Pater, “Biskupi na Ziemiach Zachodnich i Północnych jako wikariusze generalni Prymasa Polski” [in:] Stefan Kardynał Wyszyński wobec Ziem Zachodnich i Północnych, Poznań 2001, pp. 48–50.

[32] Oaths were taken by those appointed as parish priests or parish administrators who had not taken such an oath before (see: B. Fijałkowska, Partia wobec religii i Kościoła w PRL, Vol. 2 (Part 1), Olsztyn 2000, pp. 33–34).

[33] See: J. Eisler, “Stefan Wyszyński i Władysław Gomułka – dwie wizje Polski” [in:] Pojednanie i polityka. Polsko-niemieckie inicjatywy pojednania w latach sześćdziesiątych XX wieku a polityka odprężenia, ed. F. Boll, W. Wysocki, K. Ziemer, Warsaw 2010, pp. 129–151.

[34] P. Machcewicz, Władysław Gomułka, Warsaw 1995, pp. 59–60.

[35] The issue of tensions within the Church during the conciliar period, see: R. Amerio, Iota Unum. A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century, Kansas City 1996; R. Wiltgen, Ren wpada do Tybru. Historia Soboru Watykańskiego II [The Rhine flows into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II], transl. by: A Słowik, Cracow 2010.

[36] P. Raina, Kościół katolicki a państwo w świetle dokumentów 1945–1989, Vol. 2, Poznań 1995, pp. 204–208.

[37] B. Bejze, Kronika Soboru Watykańskiego II, Częstochowa 2000, pp. 94–97.

[38] J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego..., p. 231.

[39] E. Jarmoch, “Sytuacja Kościoła katolickiego w Polsce powojennej” [in:] Stosunki między władzą państwową a Kościołem katolickim w Polsce powojennej (1944–1989), Siedlce 1997, p. 55.

[40] The celebrations of the Millennium of Christianity in Poland played an important role in the religious revival of Polish society and in stopping the process of secularisation. The communist regime treated them as a challenge and for that reason organised competing celebrations of the Millennium of Polish statehood.

[41] S. Wyszyński, “W światłach tysiąclecia chrześcijaństwa Polski”, Tygodnik Powszechny, June 1, 1958.

[42] R. Łatka, “Obchody Millenium Chrztu Polski i ich rola w przebudzeniu narodowym Polaków w czasie komunistycznego zniewolenia”, Myśl.PL 2 (2016), pp. 25–26.

[43] H. Dominiczak, Organy bezpieczeństwa PRL w walce z Kościołem katolickim 1944–1990 w świetle dokumentów MSW, Warsaw 1997, pp. 354–360.

[44] The painting of the Black Madonna is generally worshipped by Polish Catholics, and remains one of the most important symbols of the community of Poles and Catholicism. It is also one of the most important symbols of the Jasna Góra shrine, a historically significant site for the Poles, as a symbol of resistance against oppression.

[45] Z. Zieliński, Polska dwudziestego wieku. Kościół – Naród – Mniejszości, Lublin 1998, p. 43.

[46] P. Madajczyk, Na drodze do pojednania. Wokół orędzia biskupów polskich do biskupów niemieckich z 1965 r., Warsaw 1994, p. 226.

[47] See: D. Gucewicz, Próba sił? Rok 1966 w Gdańsku, Gdańsk 2014.

[48] P. Raina, Kardynał Wyszyński. Konflikty roku milenijnego, Warsaw 2000, pp. 9–14.

[49] W. Gomułka, Przemówienia. Lipiec 1964 – grudzień 1966, Warsaw 1967, pp. 397–407; quoted in: A. Dudek, R. Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce..., p. 229.

[50] J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła..., pp. 234–241; P. Raina, Kardynał Wyszyński, Vol. 6: Orędzie Biskupów a reakcja władz, Warsaw 2005.

[51] E. Czaczkowska, Kardynał Wyszyński..., pp. 300–303.

[52] Tezy, założenia i programy państwowych obchodów Tysiąclecia Państwa Polskiego [i] kościelnych uroczystości Tysiąclecia Chrztu Polski. Pismo dyrektora Departamentu IV MSW S. Morawskiego do Oddziału Prewencji Ogólnej KG MO płk. B. Skulego [The theses, postulates and programmes of the commemoration of the thousand-year anniversary of the Polish state and the ecclesiastic ceremony connected with the thousandth anniversary of the Baptism of Poland. The letter of the head of Department IV of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, S. Morawiecki, to the General Prevention Department of the Main Headquarters of Civic Militia, Col. B. Skuly], November 10, 1965, Warsaw [in:] Obchody milenijne 1966 roku. W świetle dokumentów Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnętrznych, Warsaw 1998, pp. 19–20.

[53] J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła..., p. 247.

[54] W. Gomułka, Przemówienia..., pp. 426–427; quoted in: A. Dudek, R. Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce..., p. 237.

[55] AAN, UdSW, Vol. 78/71, Ogólne wnioski dotyczące milenium kościelnego w Polsce [General conclusions concerning the ecclesiastical millennium in Poland]; quoted in: A. Dudek, R. Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce..., p. 244.

[56] AAW, SPP 04/21, Komisja Główna Episkopatu Polski 1966 r., Protokół Komisji Głównej Episkopatu Polski z 30 VIII 1966 r. [The Main Committee of Polish Episcopate of 1966, The Minutes of the Main Committee of Polish Episcopate from August 30, 1966], pp. 72–73.

[57] J. Żaryn, Rok 1966 r. – Obchody milenijne w Kraju i na uchodźstwie, the typescript in the author’s collections, p. 5.

[58] J. Żaryn, “‘Katolicy koncesjonowani’ a recepcja orędzia biskupów w Polsce” [in:] Pojednanie i polityka..., p. 166.

[59] P. Raina, Arcybiskup Dąbrowski – rozmowy watykańskie, Warsaw 2001, p. 7.

[60] G. Wejman, “Kościół na Pomorzu Zachodnim i Środkowym Nadodrzu przed bullą papieża Pawła VI 'Episcoporum Poloniae caetus' i po niej” [in:] Droga do stabilizacji administracji kościelnej na Ziemiach Zachodnich i Północnych po II wojnie światowej, ed. W. Kucharski, Wrocław 2013, p. 178.

[61] R. Łatka, Czy prymasa Wyszyńskiego..., p. 206.

[62] Pismo konferencji plenarnej Episkopatu Polski do premiera Józefa Cyrankiewicza, potępiające metody stosowane przez Służbę Bezpieczeństwa oraz popierające postulaty młodzieży akademickiej [The letter of the plenary conference of Polish Episcopate to the Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz, condemning the methods used by the Security Service and supporting the postulates of the academic youth], Warsaw, March 21, 1968. Quoted in: P. Nitecki, P. Raina, “Kościół i Marzec ’68”, Chrześcijanin w Świecie 7 (1988), pp. 95–97.

[63] E. Czaczkowska, Kardynał Wyszyński..., p. 369.

[64] December 1970 saw a wave of worker protests against a price rise, which took place in northern Poland on the Baltic seaboard. The communist regime pacified the strikes, deploying troops. There were 45 dead and over 1100 wounded.

[65] J. Eisler, Polskie miesiące czyli Kryzys(y) w PRL, Warsaw 2008, p. 151

Chapter 3

Edward Gierek’s era. Between liberalisation and disintegration[1]

A new chapter in the regime’s policy towards the Church began when Edward Gierek took power in late 1970, and some corrections in religious policy were made, The new prime minister, Piotr Jaroszewicz, sent a signal about the new government’s position in one of his first speeches on December 23, 1970: “With a view to consolidating the cooperation of all citizens, believers and non-believers alike, within the framework of the Front of National Unity, we shall try to achieve full normalisation of the state-Church relations, expecting that the government’s efforts will be properly understood in the clerical and Catholic milieus.”[2]

The departure from their predecessors’ policy, the newly branded ‘normalisation’, was signalled in this speech and many other party documents and in the press. These were however only partial and largely simulated changes, while the regime’s priorities did not change at all. There was no intention to drop certain actions, which, in certain areas, were primarily those directed at disintegrating Church structures, were even stepped up. The regime’s approach to the policy towards the Church in the 1970s was very aptly summarised by Ryszard Gryz: “Officially, in the years 1971–1980 [the government] promoted normalisation of relations with the Church, but in fact it conducted out very dangerous disintegration operations against its enterprises and institutions.”[3] The authorities decided to make only limited concessions. For the Church the most important issue was the property that the Church had in usufruct in the Western and Northern Territories. Based on the law that regulated this issue, the Church was granted the ownership of over 4,000 churches and chapels, around 1,500 buildings and several hundred hectares of arable land. Other concessions may be said to include, for example, the regulation of the issue of taxation of the clergy and the abolition of the requirement to keep parish registers. One may also mention that the atmosphere of mutual contacts changed, which gave the bishops the hope for further positive corrections in the religious policy of the authorities of ‘people’s Poland’.

The changes in the regime’s attitude toward the Church were apparent. The regime continued its battle against the clergy, even thought it used somewhat different methods than in Gomułka’s time. Still one of the priorities was to cause discord among the clergy, primarily the primate Wyszyński and Cardinal Wojtyła. To this end every move of the Cracow metropolitan was followed, his statements were combed for possible areas of conflict with Cardinal Wyszyński, and an intensive disintegration operation was carried out. Administrative pressure on the Church continued as well as efforts to restrict its public activity. The authorities still limited the member of permits for new churches and other religious buildings; however the number of permits issued differed between the dioceses, depending on their ‘loyalty’ to ‘people’s Poland’. Such a policy was to lead to divisions within the Episcopate; what is more a refusal to grant a construction permit was an element of pressure on the recalcitrant hierarchs. Another kind of pressure was drafting more seminarists into the army.

The 1970s were also a time of intensive measures directed at general secularisation of society. Among them one should mention in the first place the intensified media propaganda and the attempts to drive a wedge between young people and the Church. Nonetheless the 1970s saw a marked organisational growth of the Catholic Church. According to Zygmunt Zieliński, the number of seminary alumni rose by 30 per cent, and, furthermore, Catholic higher education institutions saw intensive growth as well. Another important problem the authorities faced was the emergence of an organised opposition, and its attitude to the clergy. The authorities launched a number of measures intended to prevent contacts and co-operation between the different opposition organisations and the Church.

However the policy of the authorities of ‘people’s Poland’ did not work. The ultimate and the most poignant manifestation of its defeat was the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as pope and his first pilgrimage to his homeland, which demonstrated that there was a very strong bond between the Poles and the Church.

Anti-Church structures

The directions of religious policy in the 1970s, as in the previous decade, were determined by the party and its numerous agencies. The decisive influence on the regime’s policy towards the Church was in the hands of the central structures, with Party chief Edward Gierek at the top. In line with his position that may be summarised in his own words: “we should live in peace and harmony with the Church, but maintain our line and avoid conflict.”[4], and a duplications policy towards the bishops was implemented. Dialogue with the Church was continued, but, simultaneously anti-Church measures were being implemented. What the authorities wanted to achieve one may infer from a document drafted by the Central Committee Secretariat of the Party in 1971. It reads, among others:

The platform of normalisation and our demands are as follows: 1) Recognition by the Church of the irreversible character of the systemic changes and of the achievements of People’s Poland. 2) Expressing a positive attitude to our alliances, particularly the alliance with the Soviet Union, as one that befits our national interests. 3) A loyal attitude and respect for the laws of People’s Poland. 4) Involvement in the Front of National Unity with a view to national unity.[5]

Important changes in the functioning of Church structures came with the territorial administration reform of 1975. As a result, the area in which the Party’s provincial committees operated also changed, so they could operate more vigorously, also with respect to the policy toward the Church. The limits of ‘normalisation’, despite all the demands signalled by the bishops, such as recognising the legal personality of the Church, the remit of the Office for Religious Affairs or the reactivation of the Joint Commission, did not change. They could not change due to the tactics adopted at the Central Committee level. As Andrzej Friszke aptly observed in his description of the religious policy in the 1970s:

The authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland were nevertheless trying to achieve the lowest possible price and, without losing sight of their strategic systemic objective, the progressive secularisation and excluding the Church from public life. It also stemmed from the assumption that the December ’70 crisis had been a result of errors in economic policy and inadequacies in the methods of administration at the top of the power structure, was not rooted in the defective systemic mechanisms or the relations between the regime and the citizens. Characteristically, matters of religious policy were not even mentioned at the VIII Plenum session of the Party’s Central Committee (February 6-7, 1971) that dealt with appraising what had happened.[6]

The initial concessions for the Church were a result of tactics adopted by the rulers in time of changes at the top of the regime. These tactics were similar to those of Władysław Gomułka during 1956–1957. As usual Stefan Kisielewski saw through this method applied by Party dignitaries:

Every new First Secretary of the Party, as yet unsure of his popularity, tries to win favours with the Church and tap into its roots in the opinion and life the nation in order to win recognition and acceptance of the people and present himself as a deliverer from the errors and infractions of the previous period. That was what Gierek and Prime Minister Jaroszewicz did, declaring their magnanimity toward the Church.[7]

One should also bear in mind that the Soviets played an important role in creating policy toward the Church. Instructions and guidelines came directly from Moscow and their execution was supervised by the embassy. The Polish Regime co-operated with the USSR on a large scale, even with respect to intelligence operations against the Holy See. The co-operation deepened further after Cardinal Wojtyła became pope. General Vitaliy Pavlov, chief of the Warsaw residency recalled that he often spoke with Stanisław Kania about the ‘militant anticommunism’ of John Paul II. “Both were interlocutors of his policy of relentless hostility toward the USSR and the socialist system.”[8]

The objectives of this policy in the 1970 were presented in action plans of the party and state structures and in the guidelines of the security apparatus. In an assessment of the Church’s activity made by Department IV of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1972, the anti-Church structures was to concentrate on the following tasks:

1. Identify in advance the politically, ideologically and socially damaging activity of the hierarchy and conceptual centres of the Roman Catholic Church and non-Catholic churches and lay Catholic associations [...]

2. Implement preventive work that would limit such activity of the churches and lay Catholic associations, which are an ideological and social threat, and particularly such actions that could lead to a danger or undermine public order or safety (religious buildings, compulsory proceedings with respect to the clergy, miracles, mass events, etc.).

3. Develop disintegration measures directed at:

– Forming the attitudes and the activity of cells and people along politically favourable lines;

– Deepening centrifugal tendencies that weaken the internal cells, differentiating the individual groups and people;

– Strengthening the positive elements in the clergy and the tendencies to build proper relations with the authorities and to affirm the socio-political and economic system of the People’s Republic of Poland.[9]

Similar objectives were formulated by religious policy makers in subsequent years. As minister, Kazimierz Kąkol, the head of the ORA, stressed in December 1975:

The policy of normalisation is a policy that stems from the basic principles of the Marxist-Leninist religious policy. In no way does it deviate from those principles. The principles were: the separation of church and state, a secular state and all its institutions, equal rights for all churches and religious organisations, civil rights guarantees, privacy of religion and the right of religious organisation, the freedom of religious worship in designated places, the prohibition of abuse of religious freedoms to purposes contrary to state and society interests.[10]

This statement clearly demonstrated the objectives and intentions of the regime with respect to religious policy, which remained unchanged, virtually, from the early days of ‘people’s Poland’, that is a complete marginalisation of the Church’s position in Polish society. Stanisław Kania summarised these objectives precisely at a meeting of the Central Committee section for clergy matters on October 7, 1971: “our intention is that in the future the Church affirms the socialist system; at present we desire its neutrality, later loyalty, and later its support, all the way to affirmation.”[11]

In the 1970s the main executor of religious policy, as before, was the ORA. Nominally the ORA and its branches were subordinated to the prime minister, but in fact to the Party’s Central Committee and probably to the security apparatus as well. In Gierek’s decade ORA saw a number of important organisational and personnel changes. It had grown in stature, because from 1974 its head had the rank of minister, and from 1976 minister and director. In 1975 in the wake of the territorial reform, significant changes were made to ORA territorial structures. Branch offices were established in each province in the provincial office or the municipal offices. These departments were included in the system of Party nomenklatura. The local departments fulfilled directives from Warsaw and dealt with daily religious administration in their area. What ORA dealt with one may discover in Circular 1/76 of the mayor of Cracow of February 6, 1976 regarding the consultations by municipal organs of religious matters with the Cracow ORA:

The duties of department are in the first place:

1) Supervising the proper proceedings regarding churches and other religious organisations in the Cracow province;

2) Taking decisions in matters regulated by the decree of December 31, 1956 on the organisation and filling of Church positions;

3) Taking decisions in matters regulated by the decree of March 20, 1950 on the taking over of mortmain by the state guaranteeing the parsons’ ownership of farms and the establishment of the Church Fund.[12]

The ORA and its territorial agencies dealt with administrative issues. Moreover the ORA apparatus also kept a register of all priests, parishes, and monastic orders. The remit of this institution was so broadly defined that it gave considerable elbow room, depending on what the regime needed.

In the 1970s the anti-Church bezpeka (i.e. state security) structures continued to operate. From this point of view an important fact was the establishment of Group ‘D’ in 1973, which was responsible for disintegration operations. The group’s founder and first chief was Konrad Straszewski. Its task was to outline strategic assumptions for Department IV and its territorial branches (sections IV in the provinces), as well as to coordinate all the disintegration measures of the units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Already, four years later, it was decided that the Group ‘D’ structures were too weak to fully realise their tasks, and for that reason the decision was made to set up their counterparts at the provincial level in twenty Citizens’ Militia commands, including Cracow, Częstochowa, Katowice and Przemyśl. These structures were engaged in criminal activities, even from the point of view of the law of the People’s Republic of Poland, for example the beating up of priests by so-called ‘unidentified perpetrators’. With regard to anti-Church operations carried out by the security apparatus and ORA structures, the 1970s brought not only Group ‘D’ but also development of previously established structures. The biggest change came with the territorial reform of 1975. The emergence of organised opposition and the system’s crisis resulted in further strengthening of the existing Security Service units and creating new ones, as evidenced in the increased number of employees in the security apparatus.

Repressions, surveillance, disintegration

Through the entire period of ‘people’s Poland’, one of the most important elements of policy towards the Church was control over the vital structures of the Church, that is, primarily over the episcopal curias, seminaries and Catholic higher education institutions. Efforts were made to obtain as broad and reliable information about them as possible. All kinds of technical apparatus such as eavesdropping devices were used, as well as information obtained from people who were associated with those institutions. The Ministry of Internal Affairs planned to place new informants in the curias, so it instructed the provincial anti-Church structures to recruit priests who had a chance to be promoted in the Church administration or those who were marked as future bishops. It was discussed openly in state security documents. For example the Cracow Security Service plans for 1977 stressed: “the main emphasis ought to be placed on the leadership centres, on the operative cells of lay and monastic clergy.”[13] All Polish bishops were put under surveillance, with the most attention directed at Primate Wyszyński and Cardinal Karol Wojtyła. Both hierarchs were surrounded by a network of agents, whose purpose was to gather all kinds of information about them.

Members of the Polish Episcopate, with Primate Stefan Wyszyński, visiting Żabikowo, September 5, 1972 (AIPN)

In the years 1970–1980 the principal objective of the regime was to reduce the influence of the Church hierarchy on the socio-political reality of ‘people’s Poland’. All kinds of methods were used for instance attempts were made to divide the bishops, force appointments of specific candidates for important Church positions or conduct talks with the Holy See without the mediation of the Episcopate. Another method was disintegration. This term covered actions directed at “the most important planning and programmatic cells of the Church”, aimed at disorganisation, burdening them with internal problems, weakening their influence on the executive cells, exacerbating the antagonisms between parish priests and monastic clergy, and sowing misunderstanding between Catholic activists and the Church hierarchy.[14] The most important objective of disintegration was to sow discord between the two Polish cardinals: Wyszyński and Wojtyła. In the early 1980s, the primate was deemed definitely more dangerous, and called ‘the black cardinal’. However, the regime’s approach gradually changed and from the mid-1970s Cardinal Wyszyński previously regarded as the main obstacle in the government’s policy and the Church, was considered a patriotic realist. Cardinal Wojtyła was considered to be more unpredictable; he was called a ‘cosmopolitan trouble-maker’ and deemed haughty because he refused to contact the Cracow provincial authorities, among other reasons. In the eyes of the regime, the Cracow metropolitan was enemy number two, next to Bishop Tokarczuk, who was hated by the apparatus of repression, and therefore he was placed under strict control of state security. These long-term operations against him were planned, and were to undermine his position and prestige. The following were to be utilised, primarily:

– Wojtyła’s personal relations with Irena Kinaszewska;

– the possibility of extending the conflict between the monastic orders;

– presenting the synod of the Cracow metropolitan curia as an opportunity to subordinate the metropolitan ordinaries to himself;

– the differences of views between Wojtyła and Wyszyński regarding the Warsaw Theological Academy and the Papal Department of Theology (Papieski Wydział Teologiczny, PWT);

– difference of opinions between Baraniak and Wojtyła regarding the conceptions and forms of pastoral work.[15]

The change in the communists’ position is particularly evident in Stanisław Kania’s declaration made in 1975 in a conversation with Bishop Dąbrowski he stressed openly:

I officially declare that nevertheless, when it comes to establishing good relations, the only candidate is Cardinal Wyszyński. We hear that he wishes to retire next year, he should not do so, and he is still needed by the nation and by the Church. We are prepared to interfere so that the pope rejects his resignation. [...] In spite of all kinds of complaints or grievances, we support Cardinal Wyszyński, who is a Pole (I am saying this in the factual and the symbolic sense) and a reasonable bishop, who has never done anything against the interests of his Fatherland. Some might even wish him to go and vacate his office. We will use all means available to prevent a troublemaking intellectual from taking such an elevated position.[16]

In 1970s also saw intensive measures taken against the Przemyśl ordinary, Bishop Tokarczuk. The Party apparatchiks were trying very hard to convince the members of the Episcopate that this hierarch’s activity was the main obstacle to improved state–Church relations. On a number of occasions, in conversations of the authorities with the Episcopate secretary, Bishop Bronisław Dąbrowski, the latter heard complaints about ‘the anti-state stance’ of Bishop Tokarczuk. Pressure in this matter was also directed at the delegate of the Holy See, Archbishop Poggi. These efforts failed, as did the extensive propaganda campaign, which hinted at the Przemyśl ordinary’s alleged collaboration with the Gestapo or the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA)[17] during World War II. Those efforts also failed to change Bishop Tokarczuk’s stance, who continued to build new churches and delivered sermons that were deemed anti-state in the eyes of the regime. One may also add that the bishop compromised the regime in 1975 when he discovered eavesdropping devices in his curia and publicised the fact. It was a rare instance of the security apparatus being exposed when it broke the law in such a spectacular manner, and is why this matter had such a significant social resonance.

As mentioned above, one of the methods used by the regime against the Church hierarchy was pressure put on the Episcopate so that important Church positions would only be filled with candidates approved by the Party leadership. The most spectacular example of such action of the authorities was the protracted conflict about the appointment of the Wrocław metropolitan. In an attempt the regime pressed for the appointment of their candidate to replace Cardinal Bolesław Kominek, who had died in 1973, first by putting forward their own candidates and then rejecting the subsequent candidates of the Episcopate (a total of 23 candidates were rejected!). After two years, the authorities accepted Henryk Gulbinowicz as the new bishop. This controversy showed that, despite their strenuous efforts, the authorities were unable to alter the procedure of episcopal appointment. One could regard the fact that the authorities dropped the terno procedure[18] in the appointment of Cardinal Wojtyła’s replacement and the subsequent appointment of Józef Glemp as the Warmia and Mazuria ordinary.

Disintegration measures were also directed against the rank-and-file priests, to divide them and pit them against the Church hierarchy, which was to lead to seizing control over a part of the clergy. Support was still offered to patriot priests, who for all kinds of benefits would declare loyalty to the communist authorities. Nevertheless the regime gradually admitted that the efforts to establish a group of pro-regime priests had failed, because the financing was shrinking and operations became increasingly frequent. In this respect, the authorities’ defeat was the more evident given that the priests from the Caritas Priests Commission did not enjoy any authority among the faithful. This does not mean, however that the disintegration campaign against the clergy was a complete failure. For example, Father Marian Lipski was compromised, and as a result of Security Service operations he was recalled from his parish. The security apparatus interfered in the election of the provincial leaders of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Let it be stressed that the efforts to recruit agents among priests were fairly successful. According to figures collected by Jan Żaryn, in 1977 the anti-Church structures of the security apparatus registered 2760 priests as secret collaborators that is 15 per cent of all priests. In certain parts of the country even a quarter of priests collaborated with the Security Service.[19] Another method used to obtain the clergy’s ‘loyalty’ consisted in summoning priests for individual or group conversations to the departments for religious affairs. According to 1972 figures there were 140 such meetings throughout the country, with 1840 priests participating.

Recalcitrant priests were even subjected to physical violence, for example Father Roman Kotlarz and Father Andrzej Bardecki were beaten. Particular attention was devoted to priests connected with the opposition, for example with the Workers’ Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników), the Confederation of Independent Poland (Konfederacja Polski Niepodległej) or the Young Poles’ Movement (Ruch Młodej Polski). They were put under close surveillance, and often threatened. Provocation was also used, for example the Ancora magazine[20] was published and distributed among the clergy or defamatory rumours were circulated (including those about their improper conduct or greed).

Yet another method of persecuting the clergy was army drafting of seminarists, and an intensive atheist indoctrination, which was meant to discourage them from entering the priesthood. As Kazimierz Kąkol emphasised, the authorities’ policy toward the drafted seminarists was strictly dependent on the assessment of a given ordinary: “The authorities made it understood that if the bishop is restrained, loyal, then the seminarists could be exempted from military service.”[21] The regime did not cease drafting seminarists even after Karol Wojtyła was elected pope, but the number of drafted clerics fell systematically ever since. The authorities did not drop this repressive measure until 1980, when the last clerics were sent home from the Bartoszyce military unit. Let it be stressed that drafting seminarists did not bring the results, which the regime expected. Not only did few seminarists leave the clergy after their military services, but the future priests that the regime deemed hostile (Jerzy Popiełuszko and Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, to name only two) came precisely from this group of clerics.[22]

When the Vatican decided to regulate the status of the Western and Northern Territories by establishing permanent dioceses in place of the apostolic administrations, the communist authorities began their efforts to establish diplomatic relations with the Holy See. The Party leaders hoped that the officials of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State are not very familiar with the intricacies of the Polish situation. Their principal objective was to marginalise the Polish Episcopate, which they wished to achieve by signing a treaty over the heads of the Polish Church hierarchy and sparking of a conflict between the Holy See and the by Episcopate. The regime reckoned that an accord with the Vatican would help it gain some influence on appointments to Polish Church positions, or even enable it to remove priests that are hostile to the regime, Its duplicity and intentions are best reflected in an analysis made for the Party’s Central Committee in 1971:

The existing contacts with the Vatican show that it is not interested in pacifying the Church and this is positive; it does express the inclination [to exhibit] a positive attitude to our platform; it raises the matter of establishing diplomatic representation on a mutual basis. We, on our part, do not see the need to establish diplomatic relations or the point in giving consent to a papal visit.[23]

However the bishops, with Primate Wyszyński at their head had no intention of watching passively, and became engaged in the talks, and demanded that the rights of Catholics in ‘people’s Poland’ be guaranteed. In a memorandum addressed to the authorities in 1972 it was emphasised: “Defining the legal situation and recognising the Church’s proper character in the People’s Republic of Poland are the fundamental elements of the normalisation of the relations between the Polish State and the Holy See. [...] Religious communities also have the right not to be disturbed in public teaching and practicing their faith in speech and in writing.”[24] Let it be mentioned here that there was a certain naiveté of certain representatives of the Holy See for example Archbishop Agostino Casaroli, but also the far-sightedness of primate Wyszyński, who prevented the Vatican’s concessions to the Polish government, which would have been detrimental to the Polish Church. Eventually, the Holy See, informed by the Polish Episcopate, began to demand the solution of important problems in the situation of the Polish Church, and therefore talks did not go beyond the semi-official level. Despite many efforts, the government of the People’s Republic of Poland did not succeed in concluding an accord with the Holy See over the heads of the Polish bishops. Furthermore the Secretariat of State made the establishment of relations conditional on the improvement of the situation of the Polish Church, and talks between the Vatican and the Polish government were to be conducted with the Polish primate acting as intermediary. The authorities rejected the most important demand of the Polish bishops, which the Vatican negotiators were making, namely recognition of the Church’s legal personality. The regime’s position was unequivocally expressed by Stanisław Kania in March 1975: “The demand to grant the Church public personality is unacceptable, because it contravenes the development tendency of the socialist law and state; it cannot be reconciled with the principle of separation of Church and state.”[25]

The last success of the authorities in their talks with the Holy See was Edward Gierek’s visit to the Vatican of December 1, 1977. It had no influence on the realisation of the demand submitted to Pope Paul VI, but it certainly strengthened the First Secretary’s position in society and at the same time, it stirred ideological confusion in the Party apparatus. The regime’s calculation and hopes concerning an accord of the Holy See proved completely vacuous after Cardinal Wojtyła was elected pope in 1978. Then the chances of playing off the Vatican against the Polish Church disappeared.

Fighting the Church’s presence in the public sphere

In the Gierek decade the struggle against the Church’s presence in the public sphere continued, and the efforts to build new churches were of special importance. The restrictions were one of the most important ways to pressure the Church and an important weapon in fighting against its presence in the public sphere. This method was used virtually throughout the entire period of the communist dictatorship in Poland. But eventually the regime’s policy in this respect became more liberal. In the 1970s, in view of the pressure exerted by the bishops and the regime’s determination to uphold the fiction of normalisation, the number of construction permits increased. Nevertheless, under Edward Gierek it was still not easy to obtain them because construction permits were regarded as an instrument of religious policy. In a letter to Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz of June 21, 1976, Kazimierz Kąkol pointed out that the number of permits should be varied in the individual dioceses, making them conditional on bishops’ ‘loyalty’ to ‘people’s Poland’. The ORA chief wrote:

The point is that the bishops who are loyal to the state or those who hold a promise of positive change of their attitude understand that the solution of the needs concerning church construction can come only by way of talks with the state authorities and not by way of creating difficulties and tensions. [...] Appropriate steps shall be taken so that [...] the bishops would properly understand their being monitored in the process of issuing permit for church construction.[26]

As has been said, in the 1970s the number of permits gradually increased. In 1971 28 out of 680 applications were considered favourably; in 1974, 59 out of 724. Nevertheless as the number of filed applications shows, the needs of the Church and of the faithful were much greater, and for that reason, in a number of places construction began without a permit. According to ORA figures, in the first half of the 1970s, the Church received over 300 construction permits, which the reporting official assessed at 50 per cent of demands filed in 1970 (700 applications). In the document one finds the following comment: “in no other area, housing construction, hospital construction, etc. did the authorities meet such a high percentage of investment demand.”[27] This type of argument was also employed in mass propaganda; pointing out that the authorities had greater priorities than building new churches.

As in the late 1960s, in the next decade, the most active hierarchs in the field of illegal church construction were Bishop Tokarczuk and Cardinal Wojtyła. On the initiative of the former 36 churches were completed without the authorities’ permit (out of 73 throughout the country). Father Stanisław Karabin recalled:

When the shell of the church was completed an investigation was launched into the construction of the building. Thus we actually built the little church using violence, at night and sometimes even during the day. When the militia turned up, the people ran away. They sometimes identified someone, but those identified would deny everything. [...] The people here have always been religious. The construction of the church invigorated and united them. Something remained, a greater unity, and more people at a mass.[28]

One might mention here that the churches were built due to the joint efforts of the clergy and the faithful: the churches in Mistrzejowice, whose construction was initiated by Father Józef Kurzeja, or in Stalowa Wola whose construction was in the hands of Father Edward Frankowski. In both cases permits were issued in order to pacify the situation; the authorities were afraid of an eruption of social discontent.[29]

The situation improved, greatly toward the end of Gierek’s decade. The authorities, being focused on the economic crisis and the activity of the opposition, no longer treated the restrictions on church construction as a priority. For that reason in many parts of the country more permits to build new churches were issued.

Another integral element of the resistance against the Church’s presence in the public sphere was strict control of religious events that were held outside church buildings. This particularly comprised the Corpus Christi processions and all kinds of pilgrimages to shrines, particularly to the Jasna Góra national shrine.

The first of those issues shall be discussed on the basis of the Cracow archdiocese. The cardinal had been trying to obtain a permit for the traditional procession from the Wawel hill[30] to the Main Market, virtually throughout his tenure as the Cracow metropolitan. The provincial authorities used all kinds of tricks to avoid issuing the permit. Eventually Cardinal Wojtyła’s pressure succeeded, and in 1979, after he had already left Cracow, for the first time after the war a traditional procession marched along the route.

In this decade the pilgrimage movement gained momentum, and simultaneously the regime stepped up efforts to crush it. All kinds of methods were applied. For example, the regime tried to make a pilgrimage to Częstochowa as difficult as possible:

Transport was interrupted by piercing tyres, among other means. People’s ID’s were stolen, sleeping bags soiled, pornography distributed, beverage containers poisoned, and by means of drugs attempts were made to remove from a pilgrimage those, who were deemed especially dangerous.[31]

The most far-reaching restrictions were directed at those priests who organised the pilgrimages, who were put under surveillance by the security apparatus. One may stress that the regime increased such efforts after Cardinal Wojtyła become pope. Yet all the efforts to limit the pilgrimage movement failed miserably, because the number of pilgrims grew steadily, year by year.

Secularisation and the struggle for young people’s hearts and minds

In the 1970s the Catholic Church saw a marked organisational development. The security apparatus noted with some anxiety the growth of young people’s ministry, which manifested itself in the development of structures and in the intensity of its influence on young. A turning point in the Church’s approach to the struggle with the communist state for the souls of young people was 1968. Under the influence of March ’68, the Polish Episcopate decided to step up work with young people, who opposed the political system of ‘people’s Poland’, but retained their Marxist view. New guidelines for work with young people were adopted during the 117th Conference of the Episcopate of Poland in the form of the Statute of Students’ Ministry, which became valid on 28 January 1971. In addition to religious content, young people’s and students’ ministries were to include social and general educational issues. The authors of the proposed programme wished that it would compete with the secular model of life and the materialistic world view fostered by state higher education institutions as part of the ideological subjects such as Marxist philosophy or the social and political sciences.[32]

The 1970s marked an expansion of the ministerial activity of the Polish Church, intended to prevent the division and secularisation of Poles. Due to the initiative of Cardinals Wyszyński and Wojtyła new methods were implemented, especially regarding pastoral care of the young. The latter was a precursor of these methods in the Polish Church. Due to his efforts in the 1970s, the Cracow students’ ministries became a kind of enclave for the young in the communists’ system of captivity. The bishops also protested vigorously against those actions of the authorities that introduced a secular, anti-religious model of education. Their protest took the form of a declaration submitted to the speaker of the parliament in October 1973 and Primate Wyszyński’s letter to the minister of education of March 6, 1974.

The Episcopate’s care for religious education of young people was all the more important in the light of the regime’s efforts to secularise society, particularly young people, by increasing the formalisation of the structure and unification of student organisations. Religious education was banned from schools as previously and according to ORA guidelines, any pastoral work among students, apart from the strictly religious, was deemed anti-state activity. A Ministry of Internal Affairs study of September 1974 reads:

The methods of activity, especially those of the students’ ministry and of the so-called ‘liturgical altar service’ conducted by means of the Oasis Movement[33] are highly detrimental in ideological and political terms, not only due to their ideological content, but also because they contain certain forms of para-organisational activity, with significant elements of hiding the participant’s involvement from the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland. Furthermore, the syllabuses of religious and ideological instruction contain extensive periods of critical saturation, and even negate the [sic! – JG] system, and particularly the Marxist ideology; [the syllabuses also] inspire young people to think that state agencies are a threat due to their engagement in religious life, including the ministry of estates and professions.[34]

The authorities regarded the activation of youth and students’ ministries as a major threat. As one security apparatus document put it: “An analysis of the forms and directions shows that the Students’ Ministry is and for a longer period of time will be the breeding ground for the cadres of the social right.”[35] That is why from the early 1970s the communist authorities made it a priority to oppose the student’s ministry and restrict it. The following objectives were formulated:

I. To weaken and limit the Church’s influence in milieus where SM [Students’ Ministry] is active.

II. Combatting instances of hostile or opposition activity against the policies of the People’s Republic of Poland.

III. To inspire positive moral and political content in SM’s activity.

IV. To inform the political and administrative agencies about the directions of SM’s activity.[36]

There were also plans to increase disintegration measures, intended to divide SM’s activists from the priests and tutors as well as administrative measures such as: conversations with their ecclesiastic superiors, blocking academic promotions of people associated with students’ ministries, cutting off access to scholarships or benefits for students who were active in SM or involved in other forms of Church activity. However, these actions of the authorities proved to be ineffective, because throughout the 1970s the involvement of young people and students’ in the ministries systematically increased, and resulted in the increasing integration of young people. This was enabled by such priests as: Father Tomasz Pawłowski and Father Jan Andrzej Kłoczkowski of Cracow, Father Ludwik Wiśniewski of Wrocław and Father Honoriusz Kowalczyk of Poznań. Furthermore, what happened in the context of the activity of students’ ministries was something that the regime feared the most; they became a breeding ground for opposition structures. For example, the Students’ Solidarity Committee[37] emerged from the Cracow Students’ Ministry ‘Beczka’ and the Young Poles’ Movement had its roots in a Gdańsk SM.

Also at that time the cultural life in the Church intensified substantially, the ‘Sacrosong’ religious song festival was launched, Christian Culture Weeks were organised, and the Artists’ Ministry was established. Also, the ‘Light-Life’[38] movement developed dynamically under Father Franciszek Blachnicki. The summer retreats that he and other priests organised attracted over 45,000 participants annually. All those initiatives were put under strict observation of the party and the state apparatus and of the Security Service, but due to their scale and extent, the communist authorities were unable to counteract them effectively.

Opposing the Church’s political involvement and its contacts with the opposition

The second half of the 1970s was marked by a deteriorating socio-economic situation. The Church made a number of statements on public affairs. In 1975 the bishops sharply criticised the proposed changes in the constitution, which included provisions concerning the socialist character of the state and the leading role of the communist party as well as permanent friendship with the Soviet Union. In a letter to the authorities, the Episcopate underlined:

The guidelines entail, propagation, in all areas of life, of the totalitarianism of the Marxist-Leninist ideology of the party, and of the state authorities. [...] Our society, which is mostly Catholic, has the right to demand the satisfaction of the needs of Catholic Culture, science, education, press, publications, association and activity of lay Catholics, and their participation in social and public life, being ubiquitous and non-fictitious.[39]

Increased tension due to the difficult economic situation ultimately led to an eruption of social discontent in June 1976 in the wake of a price rise introduced by the authorities. The authorities used violence and physical repressions to suppress the protests. The Episcopate strongly supported workers’ aspirations and called on the authorities to stop harassing society. When the Episcopate’s secretary met Stanisław Kania, he took a firm position:

We are always ready to pacify society. But as a result of a policy of repression and revenge the inflamed and outraged society will no longer be able to hear any reasonable voice. One should speak to society in a communicative and objective language. After all no one in Poland, believes that only 20 per cent of one’s salary is spent on food. [...] Poles will not be threatened or educated with a whip and statistics. Propaganda and expeditions from Golędzinów [riot police barracks] do not serve the national interest very well.[40]

An extremely important problem that appeared in the regime’s policy towards the church in the second half of the 1970s was the increase of organised opposition and the Church hierarchy’s attitude to it. The authorities were aware of the threat of a possible cooperation of the Church and antisocialist milieus. In a Department IV study of March 1976 Konrad Straszewski wrote:

The anti-socialist elements are oriented towards the Church for its programmatic assumptions, maintaining independent institutional forms of activity and the reactionary political line of the leadership of the Episcopate. They, as well as antisocialist centres in the West would wish to activate, for their purposes, the basis, the cadre potential and the Church’s capacity to propagate its views (approximately 13,000 pupils); find support in it. Antisocialist elements in the country are aware that in the event of the Roman Catholic Church’s withdrawal from political engagements contrary to the state and socialism, their position and ability to act would be seriously weakened.[41]

The rulers found it particularly difficult to deal with Cardinal Wojtyła and Bishop Tokarczuk who did not hide their sympathy for the striking workers, and later the newly established opposition organisations. The latter, the Przemyśl ordinary, said:

[The Church should] support the freedom tendencies in the nation. [...] For this situation is difficult and delicate. We cannot become engaged from the political standpoint, but our stance must be clear and understandable for the Nation. Our purpose is not to fight or make trouble. It is to be gentle and reasonable but not at the nation’s expense.[42]

One of the chief tasks of the ORA and of the Security Service was combatting all kinds of contacts of the opposition with the clergy, primarily with the hierarchy. The regime was aware how dangerous such cooperation could be, substantial efforts were made to combat priests involved in actions for the emerging underground. One result of the emergence of organised opposition was that “it was precisely the cutting of the ties of ‘dissident milieus’ with the institutional Church that become one of the priorities of division IV implemented together with division III.”[43] In the plans of the security apparatus for 1976–1980 this was a top priority objective. The Cracow Security Service plans for 1980 specified that for example among the priority objectives were:

Actions directed at isolating the Church from relations with opposition groups. Making it more difficult for antisocialists to reach the Church, and its lay agencies. Counteracting attempts to use church buildings, by antisocialist groups, for propaganda activities and organising political demonstrations.[44]

The events of June ’76[45] brought the emergence of opposition structures that stood in defence of repressed workers. It should be noted that each of the organisations that emerged at that time sought the Church’s support, but not all of them enjoyed the confidence of the bishops and of the clergy. As Ewa Czaczkowska aptly remarked, with respect to the opposition the primate maintained “distance and caution, and always stood in defence of the oppressed”,[46] but never wanted to involve the Church directly in opposition activity. Cardinal Wyszyński received opposition activists from various milieus, even those who were as distant from the Catholic faith as Jacek Kuroń, because he wanted to meet them in person and learn what their views were. However, he had no intention of expressing any official support or of offering them advice on how to operate. The primate’s chaplain Father Bronisław Piasecki recalled that to his office in Miodowa Street all kinds of people came who wanted to advise the primate how the Church should act. One day Jacek Kuroń came, the primate listened carefully, but asked no questions. Half an hour later he thanked him for the remarks. [...] But, let me repeat, that was the primate’s style. He listened, sometimes asked questions, but mainly kept quiet. Later he analysed.[47]

Certainly, Cardinal Wyszyński was distrustful of the Workers Defence Committee, because he thought that some of its leaders had not completely overcome their Marxist past. Father Piasecki emphasised: “True, he did keep the Workers’ Defence Committee at a distance. He proceeded on the assumption that it was not a representation of the entire nation but a left-liberal current of the emerging opposition.”[48]

The attitudes of the clergy to the organisations that emerged in 1976 were very different. Many kept their distance, which stemmed from the unequivocal stance of the Episcopate, namely that the clergy should not become involved in politics, and from the conviction that supporting the opposition means risking a conflict with the authorities. As Jan Żaryn aptly noted:

Among the entire clergy, both in the dioceses and among monastic clergy, the percentage of those directly involved in political action was scant (as was the number of people engaged in opposition activity). Their attitude, although honourable did not help the bishops to carry out dialogue with the government of the communist state. Furthermore, those priests tended to side with the younger generation, which contrasted with the passive stance of their parents and their consent to the existence of the People’s Republic of Poland. The bishops were members of the same generation as their parents and grandparents.[49]

Nevertheless, one should not forget that some priests closely cooperated with the opposition, and in a number of cases directly influenced the orientation of certain opposition milieus. The repressive security apparatus fiercely opposed this type of clergy activity, sometimes resorting to methods that violated the existing laws, such as assault or even murder.

Pope Karol Wojtyła, John Paul II, comes to Poland

A crowd of the faithful in the Main Market Square awaits the arrival of Pope John Paul II at St Mary’s Basilica in Cracow during his first pilgrimage to Poland (Security Service operational photograph), June 9, 1979 r. (AIPN)

The regime’s religious policy remained unchanged after Karol Wojtyła was elected pope on October 16, 1978. For quite some time the Party dignitaries did not realise what kind of consequences this fact could bring. The prevalent mood was that of shock and disbelief. At a session of the Party’s Central Committee someone said: “ultimately better to have Wojtyła as pope over there than as primate here”[50] and these words met with some enthusiasm. More accurate was the assessment formulated by Bronisław Michaliszyn, one of the most important militia officers in the Cracow province: “In some Church milieus and anti-socialist groups the election of Cardinal Wojtyła evoked an atmosphere of excitement and euphoria. At the same time it also increased the internal cohesion of the clergy, consolidation of the political attitudes of the clergy and of some lay Catholic activists, as well as the sheer audacity with which critical, often hostile views were formulated”.[51]

Soon after the election, the authorities were faced with a new problem, the planned pilgrimage of the Holy Father to Poland. This issue was first raised publicly by Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, already in less than a month after the conclave, on November 6, 1978:

There is hope that the Holy Father wishes to come to Poland as soon as possible. The most opportune moment would be the ceremony of Saint Stanislaw at Cracow scheduled for May 13 next year. Perhaps the Holy Father would see not only Cracow but Częstochowa as well. But allow me, discreet as I am, to seal my lips and I will not let my heart speak, but will entrust these thoughts to your hearts. What your prayers would bring; would also benefit the Church in Poland and in Rome.[52]

In late November, a communiqué from a session of the Polish Episcopate Conference announced the pilgrimage. The authorities dragged their heels, as they did not wish to operate under the pressure of an accomplished fact. In a conversation with the Episcopate Secretary Bishop Bronisław Dąbrowski, Stanisław Kania ruled out the idea of John Paul II’s visit to Poland. It was only on January 24, 1979 when Primate Wyszyński met Edward Gierek, who declared that the Holy Father had the right to visit Poland. The authorities were trying to set a date and terms that would be convenient, because they wished to prevent the pilgrimage from taking place in May, when it would coincide with the Saint Stanislaw ceremony, which the communists perceived as a symbol of resistance against the state.[53] Ultimately it was agreed that John Paul II would come to Poland on June 2, and the visit would end on June 10.

One of the most important tasks for the Party, the ORA, and the Security Service was then the gathering whatever information related to the visit of the Holy Father. On April 24, Department IV of the Ministry of Internal Affairs formulated Guidelines of the Superior of the Chief of the Ministry’s staff regarding the tasks of the units of the department of internal affairs with regard to the operation ‘Lato ’79’ (Summer ’79). The document reveals that the most important task of the security apparatus was to “develop operational and reconnaissance and preventive, or neutralising measures directed at groups and milieus controlled by the SB [Security Service] and MO [Citizens Militia].”[54] Characteristically, the pope’s safety was only a secondary consideration. Each ceremony was to be observed and controlled not only by the repressive security apparatus, but also by the agent network. Furthermore, other measures were taken to reduce the attendance at the individual events in which the pope participated. Thus the regime tried to reduce the number of those who would hear the pope’s message. The main reconnaissance and preventive tasks focused on opposition milieus and on “identifying the intentions and initiatives of the hierarchy, clergy and Church activists.”

Another equally important task of the Security Service, the ORA and Party structures was to prevent contacts of the opposition with the Church, because such cooperation could bring consequences that would jeopardise the Party’s monopoly of power. Therefore the authorities were gathering information about the opinions, preparation and actions of various milieus.[55] The Church established who would be responsible for preparing the pilgrimage. The bishops achieved a success in establishing a joint state-Church team to be responsible for working out the organisational details of the visit. The authorities were represented by: Stanisław Kania, Jóżef Czyrek, Kazimierz Kąkol (minister and ORA Chief), and Aleksander Merker (ORA director general). The Church representatives were: Archbishop Franciszek Macharski, Bishop Bronisław Dąbrowski, and Father Alojzy Orszulik. The first meeting took place on February 14, 1979. The joint commission worked out the final plan and programme of the visit. The commission had its local counterparts. The authorities were planning to: “Take advantage of the opportune time to establish as many contacts as possible with the bishops and the priests, mainly parish priests in order to foster their attitude of loyalty to the socialist state and to encourage desirable behaviour of the believers during the pope’s visit.”[56]

The behaviour of the authorities during the first papal pilgrimage was far from homogenous. On the one hand they tried to maintain good official relations with the Church, and on the other state security operated at full capacity. Filip Musiał wrote:

Certainly what is the most difficult aspect to assess are the effects of manipulation measures. It remains a fact that no social unrest erupted; there were no strikes, no demonstrations or particularly intensive opposition activity. No political accents disturbed the religious ceremonies in which John Paul II participated. It is hard to say to what extent it was a result of effective work of agents of influence, or for example of the efforts of Primate Stefan Wyszyński, who had met opposition activists before the pilgrimage. Yet regardless of the real reasons, that state of affairs was considered by the state security (bezpieka) as its operational success.[57]

A significant success achieved by the security apparatus was planting its agents in Church milieus in all the Church organisation committees. The agents recruited then later played an important role in monitoring the Church in the 1980s.

The Security Service and the Party apparatus examined the pope’s speeches only cursorily. Only general conclusions were drawn, namely that the speeches were detrimental to the communists but no one really thought about the consequences of the pope’s words. As Marek Lasota aptly observed: “John Paul II came to his homeland with the message of the Gospels, which has been preached for two thousand years. To read it and understand it, it was not necessary to engage several hundred agents, and over a thousand Security Service and militia functionaries. But to understand this simple truth proved to be a task too difficult for the communist regime.”[58]

John Paul II during his first pilgrimage to Poland (Security Service operational photograph), Warsaw, June 2, 1979 r. (AIPN)

John Paul II with his successors, the then Cracow Archbishop Franciszek Macharski and the future Cracow metropolitan Father Stanisław Dziwisz (Security Service operational photograph), June 10, 1979 r. (AIPN)

Despite an enormous investment of means and manpower, the first visit of John Paul II in ‘people’s Poland’ proved to be a great success of the Polish Church. In the first place, what failed were the efforts of the Party apparatchiks, which were directed at discouraging the Poles from taking part in papal celebrations. The scale of the failure was confirmed by the crowds who came to the events. When the visit was over, the Church’s position in the country [had changed], which would be felt in August 1980. Yet, the authorities seemed not to see the magnitude of the Church’s success and did not realise its enormity precisely until the August events. The pilgrimage triggered “an avalanche of positive results, which were crowned by the emergence of the ten-million strong Solidarity movement”[59], wrote Jan Żaryn. Marcin Zaremba expressed a similar opinion, and further stressed the delegitimisation of the communist regime:

The pilgrimage of John Paul II that began on June 2, 1979 had a religious dimension, as well as a social one, with revolutionary consequences. Over a span of several months, the pope became a national authority, and a centre of national identity. These sentiments also became manifest during his visit [...] During his meeting with Edward Gierek in the Belvedere, the people’s eyes turned to him. He smiled and at the same time was full of dignity and concentration. He spoke of important things: of Polish history, of what ‘homeland’ meant to the community and to the fate of the people and of the Church. By pointing out the right of Poles to live in a sovereign state, he reinstated the meaning of such words as ‘homeland’, ‘truth’, and ‘freedom’. [...] The First Secretary of the Party paled in comparison. His speech was hardly novel, it was run-of-the-mill and banal. [...] Gierek was quite popular and respected widely. But when he stood next to John Paul II and spoke, all his charisma, all his charm had gone. In a process of regime delegitimisation, which precedes every revolution, it was an important event.[60]

Summary

In the 1970s Edward Gierek’s ruling clique did not change the principal directions of religious policy in the first 25 years after the war. The regime still regarded the Church as a barrier that blocked the development, of the socialist system. The government of ‘people’s Poland’ proclaimed ‘normalisation’ and at the same time developed and perfected measures directed at marginalising the social authority of the Church. At that time the regime’s priority was the disintegration of the Church hierarchy and clergy. In the first place efforts were made to sow discord between Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński and Karol Wojtyła, as well as to discredit the Przemyśl bishop, Ignacy Tokarczuk. Moreover, in the 1970s a number of secularisation measures were implemented, particularly with respect to young people, which however, failed to yield any substantial results. The decade saw a pastoral expansion of the Polish Church in Polish society, which was directed at preventing the disintegration of society, and the regime was powerless and unable to counteract it. Not only was the regime unable to marginalise the Church socially, but it even developed significantly in organisational terms. According to Zygmunt Zieliński, the 1970s saw a 30 per cent increase in the number of diocesan clergy, and a dynamic development of Catholic higher education institutions. Thus Jan Żaryn presents the effects of what the Church and the faithful did at that time: “Society’s pressure on the regime was such that it observed the basic religious freedoms, and certainly was more effective than in the previous decade. Although secularisation remained the leading slogan the communists’ determination to implement it was steadily waning, especially as the dynamism of the faithful grew.”[61]

Nonetheless, one should not forget certain successes of the communist regime in the religious policy. In the first place one might mention that it succeeded in blocking the construction of many churches, particularly in cities. Surveillance of the Church continued, and the number of secret collaborators among the clergy increased. Thus the regime had a fairly accurate picture of the Church’s plans and it enabled them to counteract many initiatives of the hierarchy.

[1] The title of this chapter corresponds to the article by Ryszard Gryz: “Między liberalizacją a dezintegracją. Stosunki państwo–Kościół w latach siedemdziesiątych” [in:] Stosunki państwo–Kościół w Polsce w latach 1944–2010. Studia i materiały, ed. R. Łatka, Cracow 2013, pp. 73–92.

[2] Trybuna Ludu, December 24, 1970.

[3] R. Gryz, “Między liberalizacją a dezintegracją...”, p. 85.

[4] W cieniu Prymasa Tysiąclecia. Z profesorem Romualdem Kukołowiczem rozmawia Piotr Bączek, Warsaw 2001, p. 130.

[5] A. Dudek, “Polityka władz Polski Ludowej wobec Kościoła katolickiego – trwanie i zmiana” [in:] Represje wobec osób duchownych i konsekrowanych w PRL w latach 1944–1989, ed. A. Grześkowiak, Lublin 2004, p. 18.

[6] A. Friszke, “Wstęp” [in:] PRL wobec Kościoła..., pp. 8–9.

[7] S. Kisielewski, Na czym polega socjalizm? Stosunki państwo–Kościół w PRL, Poznań 1990, p. 86.

[8] M. Skwara, A. Grajewski, Agca nie był sam. Wokół udziału komunistycznych służb specjalnych w zamachu na Jana Pawła II, Katowice 2015, p. 397.

[9] Plany pracy Departamentu IV MSW na lata 1972–1979, ed. M. Biełaszko, A. Piekarska, P. Tomasik, C. Wilanowski, Warsaw 2007, p. 7.

[10] A. Friszke, PRL wobec Kościoła. Akta 1970–1978..., p. 180.

[11] Tajne dokumenty. Państwo–Kościół 1960–1980, Aneks, London 1996, p. 371.

[12] R. Łatka, “Krakowskie struktury aparatu państwowego PRL zajmujące się Kościołem katolickim”, Zeszyty Historyczne WiN-u, 36 (2012), p. 162.

[13] Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej [Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance] (later: AIPN) Kr 060/87 Vol. 5, Kierunki pracy SB w 1977 [SB’s Work Tendencies in 1977], p. 8, Główne kierunki pracy Służby Bezpieczeństwa na 1977 r. [Main Work Tendencies of Security Service for 1977], December 29, 1976.

[14] Musiał, “‘Zakres pracy... bez zmian.’ Wydział IV SB w Krakowie w latach 1975–1978” [in:] idem, Raj grabarzy Narodu. Studia i materiały do dziejów aparatu represji w Polsce ‘ludowej’ 1945–1989, Cracow 2010, p. 292.

[15] Plany pracy Departamentu IV..., pp. 212–213.

[16] P. Raina, Rozmowy z władzami PRL. Arcybiskup Dąbrowski w służbie Kościoła i narodu, Warsaw 1995, Vol. 1, pp. 223–224.

[17] A Ukrainian armed organisation, established in1942; The UIA had an extremely nationalist and fascist political programme: the extermination of Poles and Jews living in eastern Polish territories, which the UIA regarded as ‘Ukrainian’. Its principal operational area was Volhynia and Galicia, and was the organisation responsible for the genocide of the Polish civilian population in those areas. The last UIA detachments operating in the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1956.

[18] The terno procedure meant that the authorities would accept one of the three candidates presented by the Episcopate without further reservations.

[19] J. Żaryn, “Stosunki Państwo–Kościół w czasach posługiwania biskupiego Jana Jaroszewicza (1963–1980)”, Kieleckie Studia Teologiczne, 2005, Vol. IV, pp. 275–276.

[20] A periodical founded by the bezpeka (state security) and run by its secret collaborators, former Catholic priests who had left the Church in order to create confusion among the clergy during 1973-1985.

[21] K. Kąkol, Spowiedź ‘pogromcy’ Kościoła, Olsztyn 1994, p. 25.

[22] Father Tadeusz Isakowicz- Zaleski was one of the so-called ‘restive priests’. Already as a seminarist he began to cooperate with the anti-communist opposition and distributed underground publications, he also became deeply involved in Solidarity’s activity during the martial law period. Father Isakowicz-Zaleski was under state security surveillance and in 1985 he was beaten up twice by so-called ‘unknown perpetrators’.

[23] Archiwum Akt Nowych [Archive of New Records] (later: AAN), Komitet Centralny Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej [Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party] (later: KC PZPR), 4660, p. 254; quoted in: A. Dudek, R. Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce..., p. 298.

[24] J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego..., p. 313.

[25] J. Żaryn, Kościół w PRL, Warsaw 2004, p. 102.

[26] “Dokument nr 15. Pismo kierownika Urzędu do Spraw Wyznań do prezesa Rady Ministrów z 21 czerwca 1976 z propozycjami dotyczącymi budownictwa sakralnego w 1976 r.” [Document no. 15. The letter of the chief of the Office for Religious Affairs to the Prime Minister from June 21, 1976 containing proposals concerned with sacred buildings in 1976.] [in:] A. Friszke, PRL wobec Kościoła..., pp. 200–201. It was also mentioned by Kazimierz Kąkol, a minister and chief of the Office for Religious Affairs (later: ORA) in his memoir: “The number of permits for building churches depended on the ratings given to bishops or parsons by functionaries. Those who did not cause trouble could count on better treatment”, K. Kąkol, Spowiedź “pogromcy” Kościoła..., p. 25.

[27] AAN UdsW 137/59, A note concerning the sacred buildings in the years 1970–1975, Warsaw, December 22, 1975, p. 4.

[28] A. Boniecki, Budowa kościołów w diecezji przemyskiej, Paris, no date, pp. 141–146.

[29] See: A. Sznajder, Budownictwo kościołów w diecezji częstochowskiej w latach 1945–1989, Katowice 2016.

[30] The Wawel castle was the residence of the Polish kings; it is a symbol of the strength and greatness of medieval Poland.

[31] P. Fenrych, “Środowiska inteligencji katolickiej w przemianach społecznych i politycznych Polski po 1975 roku” [in:] Społeczeństwo–państwo–Kościół (1945–2000). Materiały z ogólnopolskiej konferencji naukowej. Szczecin, 15–16 VI 2000, ed. A. Kawecki, K. Kowalczyk, A. Kubaj, Szczecin 2001, p. 124.

[32] K. Maniewska, Kościół katolicki w Bydgoszczy wobec prób laicyzacji i dezintegracji społeczeństwa w okresie rządów Edwarda Gierka (1970–1980), Warsaw 2007, p. 181.

[33] One of the Catholic renewal movements, initiated during the Second Vatican Council. The movement brings together people of different ages and states, and through information appropriate for a given group helps them become mature Christians.

[34] Tajne dokumenty państwo–Kościół..., p. 414.

[35] Plany pracy Departamentu IV..., p. 56.

[36] Ibidem, p. 56.

[37] An opposition organisation, founded in Cracow in 1977, in the wake of the assassination of the student Stanisław Pyjas by state security, in protest against the regime’s use of violence. The Committee went on to organise educational activity and protests against human rights violations in ‘people’s Poland’.

[38] A renewal movement in the Catholic Church, founded in the 1950s by Father Franciszek Blachnicki. The movement’s objective is to deepen personal religiosity through a formation process, which leads to embracing Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Saviour.

[39] J. Żaryn, Kościół w PRL..., p. 113.

[40] P. Raina, Rozmowy z władzami PRL..., p. 231.

[41] Dokument nr 14..., p. 188.

[42] AAW, SPP 04/33, Rada Główna Episkopatu, Protokół Rady Głównej Episkopatu Polski z 13 VI 1978 r. [The Main Council of Episcopate, The Minutes of the Main Council of Polish Episcopate from June 13, 1978], p. 143.

[43] F. Musiał, “Zakres pracy...bez zmian”..., pp. 288–289.

[44] AIPN Kr, 066/45, Vol. 4, Kierunki działań operacyjnych Wydziału IV w 1980 r. [The Directions of Department IV Operational Activities in 1980], Cracow, December 27, 1979, p. 337.

[45] A wave of protests and strikes in June 1976, which erupted in response to a drastic price rise of a number of products. They reached their apogee in Radom, Ursus, and Płock. The protests were crushed with force, and the protesters were subjected to repressions.

[46] E. Czaczkowska, Kardynał Wyszyński..., p. 626.

[47] B. Piasecki, M. Zając, Prymas Wyszyński nieznany. Ojciec duchowy widziany z bliska, Cracow 2016, p. 93.

[48] Ibidem, pp. 113–114. Compare with the opinion of Romuald Kukołowicz, who also emphasised that the primate did not trust Jacek Kuroń and Adam Michnik (idem, W cieniu Prymasa Tysiąclecia..., p. 136).

[49] J. Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła..., p. 386.

[50] K. Kąkol, Spowiedź pogromcy Kościoła..., p. 90.

[51] R. Łatka, “Krakowski etap I pielgrzymki Jana Pawła II do Ojczyzny z perspektywy władz PRL. Próba syntetycznego spojrzenia” [The Cracow Stage of the First Pilgrimage of the Pope John Paul II to the Homeland from the Point of View of the Authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland. An Attempt at a Synthetic View], [in:] Res Historica 42 (2016), pp. 307–308.

[52] R. Łatka, “Wstęp” [in:] Pielgrzymki Jana Pawła II do Krakowa w oczach SB. Wybór dokumentów, ed. R. Łatka, Cracow 2012, p. 12.

[53] Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów suffered a martyr’s death in 1079. His killing was ordered by Bolesław II the Generous.

[54] AIPN Kr, 060/79, Object Case “Lato-79” [Summer–79], Vol. 3, Plan działań operacyjno-profilaktycznych wydziału III KW MO w Krakowie w okresie operacji “Lato-79”, May 5, 1979, pp. 16–21.

[55] R. Łatka, “Stosunki państwo–Kościół w latach osiemdziesiątych na przykładzie wizyt Jana Pawła II w Krakowie” [in:] Stosunki państwo–Kościół w Polsce w latach 1944–2010..., pp. 93–96.

[56] AAN, KC PZPR, LI/205, Wydział Społeczno-Prawny, Sektor ds. Polityki Wyznaniowej i Narodowościowej [Socio-Legal Department, Sector for Denominational and National Policy], A note from the meeting of a member of Politburo, KC secretary, tovarich Stanisław Kania with I secretaries of Province Committees of the provinces interested in preparation of the Pope John Paul II’s visit to Poland, March 22, 1979, pp. 72–73.

[57] F. Musiał, Operacja “Lato-79”..., p. 212.

[58] M. Lasota, Donos na Wojtyłę. Karol Wojtyła w teczkach bezpieki, Cracow 2006, p. 310.

[59] J. Żaryn, “Jan Paweł II, pogromca żelaznej kurtyny” [in:] Solidarność z Błoń. Wokół nauczania społecznego Jana Pawła II, ed. M. Drzonek, M. Siedziako, Szczecin 2011, p. 21.

[60] M. Zaremba, “Zimno, ciepło, gorąco. Nastroje Polaków od ‘zimy stulecia’ do lata 1980” [in:] Solidarność od wewnątrz 1980–1981, ed. A. Friszke, K. Persak, P. Sowiński, Warsaw 2013, pp. 21–22.

[61] J. Żaryn, Kościół w PRL..., p. 111.

Chapter 4

The 1980s. Dialogue and persecution

The 1980s, the last decade of ‘People’s Poland’, were substantially different from the previous decades with respect to religious policy. The chief factor at play here was the birth of Solidarity, which forced the regime to make a number of unplanned concessions to society and the Church. The Church was no longer an enemy but a difficult and demanding partner, which was able to force the communist apparatchiks to make concessions in its own interest and that of society.

The rise of Solidarity of 1980 shifted the regime’s focus from fighting against the clergy to control over the new trade union. It also led to substantial changes in the regime’s religious policy and liberalisation of a number of its main elements. From August 1980 to December 1981, the ‘Church–state–Solidarity’ relations were of paramount significance for communist dignitaries. On the one hand, they endeavoured to prevent the excessive rapprochement (as they viewed it) between the clergy and the opposition, and, on the other, they strove to use the Church’s authority to pacify the popular mood. This period was characterised by considerable concessions to the bishops regarding many of their demands, and certain elements of the religious policy. It was particularly striking with respect to the construction of churches; permits for new churches were issued on a truly mass scale.

Even the martial law did not lead to more significant changes in religious policy. It was emphasised that one of its permanent elements was development of constructive dialogue and cooperation with the Church. The policy was to serve the same purpose as before, during the ‘Solidarity carnival’, to tone down the popular mood and to limit the scale of street demonstrations. On the other hand, anti-clergy operations were continued as well as attempts to reduce the clergy’s social status. The authorities did not forget that the bishops had condemned the martial law and ceaselessly demanded that it be lifted. During the decade, churches all over Poland became sanctuaries for all those who did not accept the communist dictatorship and a place of resistance, and also place of resistance against repressions.

Vigorous anti-Church policy was resumed following the negative assessment of John Paul II’s second pilgrimage to Poland in 1983, which proved to be a great success of the Polish Episcopate. Certain elements of hostile policy from the previous decades were reinstated. The harassment of clergymen who supported the opposition was stepped up, a large-scale operation to remove crucifixes from schools and other institutions was launched, and anti-Church propaganda was intensified. This lasted until late 1985 and early 1986. One might say that the end of this period came with the amnesty law[1] and the beginning of preparatory talks regarding the third papal pilgrimage. It was the beginning of a new period (as it happened, these were the last days of the communist regime in Poland), and it was marked by ‘cooperation’ with the Church, an idea conceived by Wojciech Jaruzelski. The result did not prove to be favourable for him, because the Church’s position vis-à-vis the regime gradually grew in strength, while that of the ruling group withered. This became particularly visible during the systemic transformation. It suffices to mention the role of the clergy in signing the Round Table accords, and later in the June 1989 elections; without the Church’s support the Solidarity Citizens’ Committee would not have achieved such a substantial success.

Anti-Church structures

The three last First Secretaries of the Party viewed the relations with the Church hierarchy as quite important, particularly Wojciech Jaruzelski who held this post the longest in the 1980s. As historical research reveals, he saw the policy vis-à-vis the Church as one of the most important areas. He devoted considerable attention to the planning of this policy and charged his closest associates with these tasks. In the 1980s the top echelons were divided into the dogmatic proponents of firm anti-Church policy and the pragmatists, who appreciated the Church’s importance for the Poles and therefore advocated a stick-and-carrot approach. Jaruzelski treated the Church as an integral element of the political reality, which is not comfortable to deal with, but a force to be reckoned with (sometimes he would say that the Church is like a hump, so one needs to be flexible, depending on the circumstances). Therefore he believed that one should focus on the following objectives:

– deprive the Church of the emblem of the “sole legal political opposition”;

– cut the bonds between the anti-socialist opposition and the Church;

– support those forces in the Church that aspire to dialogue and cooperation with the social left;

– counteract those actions of the Church and the forces connected with it that destabilise the socialist system, increase tension and make it more difficult to overcome the crisis.[2]

In the last decade of communist Poland the principal implementer of the official religious policy toward the Catholic Church was the Office for Religious Affairs (ORA). Its tasks included drafting reports for the Party leaders on religions policy and on the activities of the individual religious organisations. It was especially important at moments when fundamental changes in religious policy were introduced. These reports were also used to put pressure on the bishops, for example during sessions of the Joint Commission, when ‘anti-state’ overtones in sermons were listed. The ORA and its branch offices mainly dealt with general administrative questions, including the issuing of permits for the construction new churches. It also played an important role in the drafting of the law on the Church’s legal personality, which was eventually passed in May 1989. During the period in question the ORA chiefs were Jerzy Kuberski, Adam Łopatka and Władysław Loranc. The Office was abolished on November 23, 1989, after Tadeusz Mazowiecki’s government took office.

The 1980s saw a renewed intensive expansion of the repressive apparatus. This entailed a dynamic growth in state security Department IV structures, the local and the central levels dealt with the Church. This expansion did only involve hiring more people, as structural reform was also introduced in August 1983. Citizens’ Militia stations were replaced by provincial, regional, and district command offices of internal affairs. As it proved to be later most of them were merely pro forma changes, as hardly anything changed in the daily routine of the Security Service. Nevertheless, the newly established regional offices streamlined operational work outside of the provincial cities. When martial law began the Ministry of Internal Affairs decided to take more offensive action in view of Party activists voicing their concern about the “waywardness of the individual members of the Church”,[3] as Central Committee Secretary Mirosław Milewski put it. On November 30, 1984, Minister of Internal Affairs Czesław Kiszczak issued Order 0067/84, which established the guidelines for anti-Church structures. Disintegration operations were to be continued, and it was a time in which operations of Group ‘D’ were increased. The structural changes in the anti-Church division of state security were also a cover for the cells responsible for the assassination Father Popiełuszko. Further organisational changes in the security apparatus took place in the wake of the political events in 1989. Despite Solidarity’s election victory[4] and the subsequent formation of Tadeusz Mazowiecki’s cabinet, control over the Ministry of Internal Affairs was left in the hands of the communist party, something the leaders of the Citizens’s Committee and of Solidarity assented to.[5] The changes and the new structures were intended to hide and protect the functionaries responsible for hindering the Church and the opposition, and at the same time to preserve the operational capabilities. Based on the Minister’s order of August 24, 1989 Department IV and the Studies and Analyses Bureau of the Security Service were replaced by the Department of Studies and Analyses of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. There were three teams in it. Its tasks included providing operational security of mass socio-political movements and counteracting ‘nationalist and religious’ threats. The Security Service was dissolved on April 6, 1990 on the basis of the law on the State Protection Office, which came into force on May 10, 1990. Most crimes committed by the functionaries of the anti-Church state security structures were never prosecuted, nor were the perpetrators ever punished. The perpetrators themselves destroyed quite a lot of archive material that documented their criminal activity.

An important organisation that had a direct influence on the state – Church relations was the Joint Commission of the Episcopate and of the Government, which was reactivated in September 1980. The Church representatives on the Commission were Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, as co-chairman, Archbishop Jerzy Stroba, the Episcopate Secretary Bishop Bronisław Dąbrowski, and Father Alojzy Orszulik. The government was represented by Kazimierz Barcikowski as co-chairman, Witold Lipski, Jerzy Kuberski and Aleksander Merker. Most of the members remained on the Commission for quite some time, and knew one another from previous engagements, and most of them were pragmatic. The Joint Commission was convenient platform for dialogue, and a place where important problems were resolved such as the law on the legal personality of the Church.

Repressions, surveillance, disintegration

For the Party authorities, contacts with the Church’s hierarchy in the last decade of communist rule were of vital importance. Operations regarding the individual curias were still a priority for the security apparatus. Intensive operational control over Church structures continued until the end of the 1980s and the systemic transformation. In June 1982, at a briefing for state security officers, Czesław Kiszczak called for intensification of such measures. Control over the Church leadership structures was stepped up during the papal visit. The Security Service was also interested in what the bishops did abroad. The security apparatus was also engaged in the analyses of the Holy See and John Paul II himself. Its role in the assassination attempt on the pope’s life is still unclear.

In the 1980s the regime was prepared to give substantial concessions for the Church’s readiness to defuse the social tensions and for keeping a distance with respect to Solidarity. Despite the fear that concessions to the Church could strengthen the bishops’ role in the system of ‘people’s Poland’, the chance to influence the popular mood through the Church was too valuable to ignore. This calculation was even more useful during martial law. The Party leadership made efforts to ensure a proper attitude of the bishops by ‘intensifying dialog with the Church’. The bishops seized the new opportunity but they had no intention to assume any responsibility for the Party’s policy. As a result the Church’s influence on the social situation grew constantly, while the regime’s influence on the Church was waning.

The rise of organised opposition in August 1980 led to improved relations with the Church on the one hand, and increased control measures over the rank-and-file clergy. Throughout the decade the regime’s priority was to discover the attitude of the individual members of the clergy to Solidarity, cutting all their contacts with the opposition, and forcing them to behave according to the expectation of the authorities. One of the priorities was control over the pastoral care for university students, albeit less pressing than in the previous decade. It should be added that the rise of Solidarity led to another phenomenon, students in the pastoral care often moved their activity to the new movement. Once the August 1980 wave of strikes began, the regime was concerned about the attitude of the clergy to social rebellion. Therefore the regime strove to obtain all kinds of information on the attitude of the priests to the strike and the emerging Solidarity. Thus the Party instructed the security apparatus to start operation ‘Summer ’80’, which was directed at obtaining information on the activities of the opposition and the Church.

Surveillance of masses and of the clergy was increased, particularly of priests suspected of contacts with the opposition. From the point of view of religious policy, what was seen as a particular threat were all kinds of joint initiatives of the clergy and Solidarity activists. The security apparatus spared no effort to prevent contacts of priests with trade unionists and tried to force the hierarchs to terminate the clergy’s involvement in opposition activities. In some cases the efforts were successful, because as Father Isakowicz-Zaleski aptly observed, “There is a prevalent myth circulating in Poland that the hierarchical Church supported Solidarity. I can say that many priests did, in various forms and to a different degree. But only a handful, were ready to go all the way. And there was a sizeable group of priests who believed that the clergy should not become involved in this, as it was politics.”[6]

Control over the clergy’s involvement in opposition activity intensified during the martial law period. All kinds of disintegration and repressive measures were developed, and they were intended to prevent the contacts of the clergy with the underground opposition. It was a result of the role many parishes, which became sanctuaries for all those who did not accept the communist dictatorship, both Catholics and atheists. The churches organised charitable help for those repressed by the regime and for their families. There was pastoral care for nearly all milieus: workers, teachers, artists, and the interned; alternative cultural initiatives were organised (exhibitions, recitals, theatrical performances) and independent education (e. g. the Christian Culture Studies center in Warsaw or the Christian Workers’ University in Cracow). The authorities deemed each of these Church activities hostile and contrary to their policy of extinguishing all kinds of opposition activity. What the communists regarded as particularly dangerous was the clergy’s engagement in opposition activity. This took various forms: from verbal condemnation of the regime during a mass through organising services for the fatherland to co-organising underground activity. The communists compiled a list of clergymen who, in their opinion, were engaged in hostile anti-communist activity. Among those listed were the following priests: Stanisław Małkowski and Jerzy Popiełuszko of Warsaw, Henryk Jankowski of Gdańsk, Hilary Jastak of Gdynia, Kazimierz Jancarz and Władysław Palmowski of Cracow, Edward Frankowski of Stalowa Wola. The communists spared no effort to reduce the activity of those priests. According to a Central Committee action plan the party and state apparatus as well as state security were tasked with:

– penetrating those areas where the principle of Church – state (including state agencies) division was violated;

– intensifying talks with the bishops and priests who deliver anti-state sermons, and where necessary applying legal measures;

– responding to social protests in the light of hostile sermons;

– demanding the Church authorities suffer consequences for hostile sermons and anti-state opposition activity;

– shocking public opinion with the Church’s public stance [...] toward the extreme wing of Solidarity (letters delegations);

– publicising facts that demonstrate unfair distribution of foreign aid by the Church.[7]

Also, attempts were made to influence the behaviour of the clergy by putting pressure on the Church hierarchy. Thus many members of the clergy engaged in opposition activity were aware that they risked a conflict with their local bishop, because most hierarchs did not approve of priests’ involvement in the underground. Sometimes this kind of pressure proved effective and those priests who failed to restrict their opposition activity were transferred to another parish.

The regime, in an attempt to restrict the activity of pro-opposition priests, sometimes returned to violent measures. The most notorious instance was the assassination of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko. One may also mention other cases. ‘Unidentified perpetrators’ beat up Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski of Cracow, burnt Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz’s car, attacked the Gdańsk bishop Tadeusz Gocłowski or were planning to assassinate Father Adolf Chojnacki. One should not forget the three priests who died in 1989 in mysterious circumstances: Father Stefan Niedzielak, Father Sylwester Zych and Father Stanisław Suchowolec; most likely they were murdered for their involvement in opposition activity.

In the last years of ‘Peoples’ Poland’, the authorities made considerable efforts to identify the clergy’s position on the talks of Party dignitaries with the opposition, the 1988 wave of strikes and the ‘contract’ election of 1989[8]. The Church’s stance on the election campaign was unacceptable to the authorities, because more than a few priests became involved in the opposition’s election campaign. The pressure put on the hierarchy or the individual parsons, who were not only ready to offer rooms for rallies but became involved in the election campaign themselves. It was this mass-scale comprehensive assistance of the clergy that proved to be one of the most important success factors of Solidarity and the beginning of the end of the communist party in Poland.

Church – regime – Solidarity relations

The Polish Primate Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński during a meeting with Solidarity delegation at the House of Warsaw Archbishop (Security Service operational photograph), 1981 (AIPN)

Even before the eruption of strikes in July 1980, the bishops were pointing out to the authorities that the socio-economic situation was very difficult. However their warnings had no bearing on the policy conducted by Party dignitaries. The crisis, which erupted in June, gradually spread throughout the country and ultimately led to the emergence of Solidarity. The authorities were completely taken by surprise. Primate Wyszyński, for the first time, referred to the strikes on August 17, during a mass at Wambierzyce Śląskie. In his homily he stressed: “the working world strives for the Nation’s social, moral, and economic rights.” At the same time, he pointed out that people “should do good work, conscientiously.”[9] His next speech on this subject delivered on August 26 at Jasna Góra was similar in tone. It contained elements favourable to the authorities and for that reason the Party’s Political Bureau decided to publicise it in the media. However it was manipulated and those fragments that put the regime in an unfavourable light were redacted. It was typical of the Party dignitaries in the 1980s. They tried to harness the Church hierarchy to toning down social tensions.

The attitude of the bishops and the clergy to the Solidarity trade union (established in 1980) was one of the important factors to shape the socio-political reality in the years 1980–1981. The Party leadership was aware that the bishops supported many of Solidarity’s aspirations, and that the Church exerts a substantial influence on its activists. Furthermore, in the eyes of the regime, the rise of Solidarity gave the Church an opportunity to broaden its social impact although the Church warned against certain tendencies within Solidarity and maintained a safe distance:

– maintained that Solidarity should concentrate on performing its social functions toward the working people without making any inroads into the realm of political activity;

– appealed to Solidarity to remain calm and reasonable, and remain members of anti-socialist organisations, chiefly KSS KOR;[10]

– warned priests against direct involvement in organising and in the activity of both solidarity [trade] unions.[11]

The authorities were prepared to make specific concessions in matters important to the Church in return for the bishops’ stance that toned down the social tensions and for keeping a distance with respect to certain elements of Solidarity. The most important of those concessions was a substantial increase in the number of construction permits for churches and the renovation of old ones, cessation of drafting seminarists into the army, something that was a repressive nuisance for many a bishop. At that time the Church was not attacked by intensive media propaganda.

Also the Joint Commission of the Polish Episcopate and the Government was reactivated, and it became a platform to facilitate dialogue between the authorities and the bishops, especially because its members were known to be pragmatic. The authorities’ are best summarised by Kazimierz Barcikowski, who at the first meeting of the Joint Commission stressed: “The government will do everything within reason to achieve further positive results.”[12] This is clearly exemplified by the scale of church construction. The authorities, in an attempt to win the Church’s favourable stance, approved many applications and issued many construction permits for new churches. The bishops welcomed the change and noted that it helps build new overdue and much needed churches. The pressure exerted by legal Solidarity (1980–1981) played an important role. After the Rzeszów strikes (February 1981), an important provision was included in the accord signed by the Government Commission and the Strike Committee. Item 4 concerned religion and education: “Organs of state administration shall issue permits to build buildings for religious purposes, guided by the needs of the faithful. All the matters regarding religious buildings will be decided by the Joint Commission of the Government and the Episcopate.”[13] Nevertheless conflicts related to the construction of new churches particularly in housing developments for workers, did continued until the end of the regime.

The situation in the Church-regime-Solidarity triangle did not change after Cardinal Wyszyński’s death, because his successor as primate, Archbishop Józef Glemp continued the policy of his great predecessor. The difference lay in the degree of subtlety, as Glemp would occasionally criticise Solidarity publicity, which Cardinal Wyszyński had never done, The new primate kept calling for rapprochement until the declaration of martial law; his efforts led to the ‘Meeting of Three’: Lech Wałęsa, Wojciech Jaruzelski and Archbishop Józef Glemp (or the first name form), on November 4, 1981. It could not, however, yield any results, because the communist regime had already prepared a plan of war against its own society and was unwilling to change it.

The inauguration of Primate Józef Glemp at St. John’s Cathedral, Warsaw, Security Service operational photograph, September 24, 1981 (AIPN)

Martial law. The Church is “against extreme measures”

Martial law took the Polish Church by surprise and encountered its staunch resistance throughout. The primate and the individual bishops were informed that martial law had been declared by members of the Office for the Religious Affairs or functionaries of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or, in some cases, by the local authorities. The idea behind notifying the bishops of it was to find out what they thought about this move and whether they could be engaged to pacify the popular mood.

Primate Glemp expressed his opinion in a homily delivered at the national shrine of Jasna Góra on December 13, 1981.[14] He spoke calmly analysing what had happened and reconsideration of any action in order to prevent bloodshed. In the early days of the martial law the bishops made efforts to prevent exacerbation of the situation and violence. On December 15, the Main Council of the Episcopate convened and issued a communiqué the same day. The bishops expressed compassion for the entire nation. They severely criticised the regime, which in their opinion had crushed popular hopes and expectations. The Main Council of the Episcopate issued recommendations for diocese ordinaries. The document merits extensive quotation, as it is illustrative of the church’s position and the directions of action during the martial law:

We request the Bishops to be so gracious as to: 1) Appeal to the provincial military commissioners for the release of interned people, particularly fathers and mothers of families as well as of the sick; 2) appeal for the right to visit those interned at Christmas; 3) offer moral and financial help to the families of the interned; 4) consider the possibility of delegating powers of Ministers by Father Deans; 5) striking workers, as those interned, have the right to receive sacraments from the ministers; 6) on Sundays and on holidays [the bishops] pray for the nation and general peace in the country; 7) in contacts with the leaders or the striking workers to persuade them to embrace the position expressed in the communiqué of the Main Council of December 15, 1981; 8) parsons in rural parishes will remind the farmers about the duty to feed society.[15]

On December 17 Primate Glemp decided to withdraw the Main Council communiqué of December 15, in the wake of the ‘Wujek’ coalmine tragedy.[16] This decision did not meet with the unanimous support of the members of the Episcopate. In the evening of December 17, the primate delivered a sermon in Gniezno, where he said: “in the earthly order of things, there is nothing dearer than the human life of another.”[17] It was not convenient for the authorities, as they wanted the protests to end and the popular mood to calm down.[18] The Church’s consistent policy was to pacify the general mood. Archbishop Glemp argued that active resistance against the regime should stop. Several years later he explained:

Yes, I knew that any word [spoken] by the Church could ignite a conflict. The tension was quite high, and we did not know what might happen in the process. And that was what I feared. I remember that Bishop Miziołek and Archbishop Dąbrowski shared my fears. Things were growing worse as Christmas approached. We knew neither the day nor the hour. We had no idea how far the communists would be ready to go. Or if the Soviets would eventually invade or not, something that the authorities were still afraid of.[19]

Glemp’s stance met with the approval of most priests and bishops, although it did encounter some criticism and resistance of some priests and hierarchs. The clergy’s attitude to the martial law is tellingly reflected in a report of Department IV of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of December 19:

The bishops and the priests still express their deep concern with the situation in the country. Most of them exhibit a realistic and moderate attitude, combined with the conviction that it is necessary to become involved in efforts to pacify the mood and restore peace. At the same time, one observes a differentiation of the clergy’s attitudes to the martial law. This is reflected in initiating prayers for the interned. During conversations some priests question the purposefulness and the legitimacy of the martial law.[20]

Party dignitaries expressed the belief that it was possible to achieve a social accord circumventing Solidarity, or after its leadership was replaced. Such an offer was presented to the Church at a meeting of the Joint Commission by Barcikowski:

Undoubtedly the difficulties in finding ways to phrase it arise from Solidarity’s indefinite situation, but it is necessary to seek a solution. Is your [i.e. the Church’s – R. Ł.] approach realistic, when you refuse to participate in the accord as long as Solidarity, the third party, is absent? To maintain this stance is highly dubious at present. No matter how one looks at it, the triangle was based on the fact that Solidarity was not only a trade union, but also a social movement, which we silently acquiesced in. When martial law was declared, one could not assume that a reborn Solidarity would be anything else than a trade union. And then it shall be put on equal footing with other [trade unions]. Today in public life there are two forces that would determine the solution. The party and the state on the one hand, and on the other the Church and lay Catholics. [...] Solidarity, in order to operate, must have a more mature political leadership.[21]

The bishops did not accept this offer of the authorities, but at the same time, they had no intention of supporting the activity of the underground, whose activists focused on organising street demonstrations, which had a substantial social resonance in 1982–1983.

As the Party leadership cared about a favourable stance of the bishops, they tried to increase dialogue with the Church. The most important platform for such dialogue was the Joint Commission, where the pressure on Church representatives was systematically increased, as it was claimed that the demonstrations began in the churches, and the extreme wing of the opposition found protection there. Despite such accusations, Joint Commissions’ talks were conducted in a friendly atmosphere and the demands of both sides were met with mutual understanding.

From day one of the martial law, the interned and the detainees could count on the Church’s help. In the communiqué of December 15, the Episcopate Main Council called on the authorities to release all the interned and to create decent conditions of detention. In the following months, the bishops and the priests frequently intervened with the authorities. Many of the attempts proved successful, and due to the Church’s pressure the conditions in detention centres gradually improved. The bishops also intervened on behalf of the internees, requesting release of people connected with the Church. The scale of such interventions was significant. For example, the ordinary of the Katowice diocese, Bishop Herbert Bednorz, contributed to the release of over 400 internees.

On December 17, 1981 the Episcopate established an organisation to help the internees: the Primate’s Committee to Help the Detained and their Families. The Committee began to operate when its structures were established in January 1982. Under the leadership of Bishop Władysław Miziołek, the organisation conducted out different kinds of activities: information, legal, medical, and financial assistance, and offered help to people dismissed from work. Soon after the establishment of the committee its local branches were set up. Help, to the internees and detainees, was one of the most important elements of the Church’s activity during the martial law period, and it was visible in all the regions of the country.

Another important element of help for the internees and the detainees was ministry in the detention centres. The Church demanded facilitation and extension of ministry. These efforts are confirmed by a Department IV report: “Some bishops (Cardinal Macharski, and Rozwadowski, Nossol, Kaczmarek, Tokarczuk, Materski, and Bareła) demand that the authorities permit priests to visit the internees and offer them ministry.”[22] Despite the difficulties, priests and bishops, and even the primate visited the detention centres with prayers and comfort. Every diocese organised ministry for the internees.

One should bear in mind that the clergy were subject to the martial law restrictions and could be repressed by the authorities. Nevertheless such measures were applied very seldom, so as not to undermine the good relations with the hierarchical Church. Arresting or detaining a clergy member was virtually the last resort. For example, in the Cracow province, Fathers Marian Gołąbek and Jan Andrzej Kłoczowski were interned. They were soon released after the intervention of Cardinal Franciszek Macharski.

At that time, the policy of the authorities towards the Church was based on the conviction that “it is necessary to situate the place and the role of the Church in accordance with the principles of the socialist system, taking into consideration the historical conditions and the sociological actuality.” Therefore, it was planned to “intensify dialogue with the Church at the other levels of contact, broadening the scope of persons engaged in talks on issues vital to the nation (the establishment of a broad mechanism of developing realistic thinking in the Church’s leading cadres regarding the problems of socialist Poland).”[23] As part of this strategy regular preventive warning conversations with clergy members were conducted, even though some bishops were staunchly critical of priests being subpoenaed by the military commissioners or by the civilian administration. At the same time plans were made to “document for the Church the negative actions of its members, which devalue the state’s religious policy”,[24] on a greater scale than before.

The conceptions of the Church-state relations from that period, drawn up by the Administrative Department of the Party’s Central Committee, show that two ideological and political principles were still valid:

– the Leninist principle of the primacy of the political objectives of the plebeian classes over ideological (religious) differences;

– the principle of the lay character of the state in terms of educational functions.[25]

It was stressed that one of the permanent elements of the regime’s policy was the development of constructive dialogue and cooperation with the Church. As during the ‘Solidarity carnival’, plans were made to utilise the authority of this institution to calm down the popular mood. One of the most important documents of the communist regime’s policy toward the Church in 1982 reads: “the socialist state, in situations that could lead to dangerous conflicts recognises the Church’s role in searching for solutions to social tension. Despite the Church’s negative attitude to the state’s political system, on doctrinal and political grounds it is against any solutions that involve extreme measures.”[26]

At the same time, it was recognised that the Church expressed its critical attitude to martial law, and put forward demands, which, if carried out – would turn back the clock to before December 13, 1981. Namely: “reactivation of Solidarity and other independent unions, the release of internees, amnesty for those convicted of crimes under martial law, promulgation of an act of clemency for those hiding, reinstating strike organisers and revalidating the August social accord.”[27]

Operations against clergy were continued as well as actions intended to reduce their social status. According to the Party Central Committee guidelines regarding religious policy, the authorities were to fight the Church on the one hand, and try to work out rapprochement, on the other. The security apparatus, on the eve of events and celebrations (such as the anniversary of the establishment of Solidarity), would take measures intended to ensure their course was uninterrupted by political incidents. A state security document stresses: Section IV [...] currently carries out a number of operations to reduce and counteract the possible attempts to use church buildings and events for political demonstrations.[28]

The state security operations had two objectives: to obtain all kinds of information on planned demonstrations, and to limit their range. Many demonstrations took place when people left the church after mass, so pressure was often put on priests, expecting that they would calm the mood of those assembled, that they would appeal to people to disperse in peace. Such operations involving the clergy were initiated before every important anniversary, especially that of the August accords.

An exceptionally important element of the martial law religious policy was surveillance of church services. The focus was on the masses for the fatherland, regularly conducted in several churches across Poland. The authorities put pressure on the bishops and expected that they would prohibit those masses or reduce their frequency, mostly in vain, and it did not reduce the activity or the involvement of the priests on the side of the opposition.

External observation of people laying flowers and candles in front of the Cracow Jesuit Church five months after Bogdan Włosik’s death (Security Service operational photograph), March 13, 1983 (AIPN).

From pilgrimage to pilgrimage (1983–1987)

When Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected pope, the authorities viewed this as an opportunity to seize and utilise in its religious policy. The primary objective was to use John Paul II to improve the perception of the authority of the regime abroad. The calculation that the Holy Father’s authority could be used to improve the image of communist Poland in the eyes of the West led to approving his first pilgrimage to his homeland, despite Leonid Brezhnev’s suggestions. In the case of the second pilgrimage the Party dignitaries had much greater expectations. Primarily they hoped that a papal visit could be used to end Poland’s isolation in the international arena. Originally, the visit was to take place in 1982, but the rigours of martial law and due to the enormous difference of opinion between the regime and the Episcopate, the visit was delayed until 1983. Negotiations on the visit’s programme were resumed in late 1982 and concluded in April 1983. The regime tried to force the Church to meet certain demands. It was expected that the Church and the pope would honour Poland’s state interests, the alliances and the interests of the neighbouring countries. In an internal document tasks for the regime’s apparatus were formulated:

– to demand of the Church a public declaration to the effect that social peace, efficient work and the cessation of underground activity are conditions for the development of Poland and the nation [...];

– to commit the Church to cease publishing unilateral statements that contain conditions and demands addressed to the authorities without prior agreement;

– to negotiate with the Church that any points decided on by the Episcopate with the Vatican regarding the programme and the contents of the visit would be previously consulted with the authorities, and the principal texts of the pope’s public speeches would be made available to the authorities before the visit;

– to demand firmly that the Church’s leadership prohibit inclusion of political content in ministerial activity, which might be contrary to the socio-political order of the People’s Republic of Poland and to the Polish raison d’etat.[29]

As it happened, the authorities failed to force the bishops to meet the demands.

In the preparatory stage of the visit the regime had two main objectives. First, to obtain a precise picture of the objectives, plans, and intentions of the hierarchical Church, the clergy, the political opposition as well as the population with respect to the visit. Another priority, closely connected with the visit, was to counteract any events that the authorities would deem negative. These tasks were to be carried out by organs of the Party and of the administration, but the most important role was that of the security apparatus. The visit engaged all the security structures, with each performing a specially designated duty. Second in importance to the anti-Church Department IV was Department III. Among its tasks were: “to secure absolute safety of the Pope and to maintain public order on the promises of protected buildings and areas.” However, the most important task of Department III was “to counteract, neutralise and prevent initiatives and actions of the anti-socialist opposition, intended to utilise the pope’s visit to achieve politically hostile objectives.”[30] There lay a certain community of interests of the regime and the Church. The bishops, led by the primate wished for a peaceful and religious atmosphere of the visit, while the regime hoped to keep it strictly spiritual. The pilgrimage, as the previous one in 1979, demonstrated the strength of the Polish Church. The large scale mobilisation of manpower and resources to secure the papal visit did not pay off for the authorities either politically or from the propaganda point of view. As Antoni Dudek aptly put it:

We should bear in mind that the authorities were painfully hurt by the sanctions imposed by the West. Jaruzelski’s team, however, did not believe that they only stood to lose if the pope visits Poland. It wanted to show: ‘Look, we let the pope in, we control the situation, and after all it is not the case that we are sitting on bayonets. And this did work out. But it changed nothing in terms of popular acceptance for the regime. The crisis was exacerbated and Jaruzelski’s team had no idea how to break the impasse.[31]

The efficiency of the Security Service and of the Party apparatus in obtaining information about the Church’s plans and intentions was quite high, but this did not translate into achieving objectives set before the papal visit. As George Weigel observed, John Paul II’s pilgrimage “strengthened the resistance of the Church, made clear that there would be no deals over or around Solidarity [...]”[32] So, the regime decided to use more drastic measures with respect to the Church, it made an ‘anti-Church turn’ for three reasons: primarily, in order to contain the strengthening of its position; secondly, in order to regain the positions previously lost to the Church; and thirdly, to prevent the consolidation of the Church’s presence as a significant force on the political scene. As Jan Żaryn pointed out, the anti-Church turn might have been (and probably was) inspired by the Kremlin: “soon after the visit of John Paul II to Poland, at the top of the regime the decision was made (perhaps inspired by Moscow) to intensify measures of surveillance of people of the Catholic Church, and, simultaneously, ‘to squeeze’ Catholicism within the bounds of ‘privacy’.”[33]

Open-air service during John Paul II’s third papal pilgrimage (Security Service operational photograph) June 10, 1987 (AIPN)

So the regime decided to resume a permanent aspiration to religious policy, pushing the Church back into its churches. An intensive battle with the Church was fought on three fronts: the struggle against the cross, countering the extra-ecclesial clergy activity, and spreading anti-Church propaganda. Depending on the moment and social events it intensified or subsided. The bishops soon noticed a change in the regime’s attitude to the Church. The September 1983 meeting of the Joint Commission was marked by the regime representatives’ attacks on the Church and on Solidarity. Kazimierz Barcikowski criticised the Church for its failure to appreciate the lifting of martial law and for its remains regarding the regime, sponsored legislation. In reply Cardinal Franciszek Macharski appealed to the authorities to start dialogue with the opposition; he further pointed out that otherwise the lifting of the martial law must be interpreted as a mere diversion. Another meeting, several months later, took a similar course. It was dominated by the Church – state relations. The regime’s representatives stated that their “line with respect to the Church” was constant, whereas the Episcopate’s line had changed. Barcikowski demanded that the Church authorities do something about the political engagement of the clergy’: “There is a number of clergy members who behave badly. One would be ashamed to name names. In some churches, lay opposition activists borrow the pulpit.”[34] Nevertheless he appreciated the responsible stance of many bishops and priests. In reply, Cardinal Macharski pointed out that the bishops often speak with those priests that are accused by the authorities, but to no effect. But in fact the Church had no intention to take any resolute steps with respect to priests who helped the opposition. One of them was Cardinal Macharski himself, who, despite his distance from Solidarity, did not forbid such activity to priest, and would speak to them only when he decided that it could be dangerous to them.

The regime’s policy toward the Church did not change even after the abduction and assassination of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko in October 1984.[35] Nevertheless this affected the state – Church relations enormously, and more broadly, the socio-political situation in communist – ruled Poland. The trial of the perpetrators, Security Service officers that the regime used to attack the clergy and the Episcopate. The state – Church relations were frozen, but the Join Commission continued to meet. Certain moves toward rapprochement that the authorities made in the autumn of 1985 and in 1986, when they needed the Church’s support for their priority points of policy: peaceful election in October 1985, and the organisation of Jaruzelski’s meeting with John Paul II in 1987, which was to help break Poland’s isolation in the international arena. Another objective of the authorities, which gradually became evident in their dealings with the Church, was to persuade it to cooperate on a greater scale in order to win credibility in the eyes of the people. This plan was consistently executed from the autumn of 1986, and was probably a result of advice Jaruzelski received from the so-called ‘team of three’ (Stanisław Ciosek, Jerzy Urban and Władysław Pożoga.[36] This did not mean that disintegration measures against the clergy were dropped, but they were conducted in a more veiled manner.

Father Jerzy Popiełuszko (AIPN)

A visible improvement in the mutual relations could have been observed in 1986. It was primarily related to the negotiations and preparations (by the authorities and the Church) for the third papal visit. The communist apparatchiks in Jaruzelski’s entourage were dominated by pragmatists, who planned to use the Church’s authority to improve the popular perception of the regime. The negotiations concerning the third papal pilgrimage enabled ‘defrosting’ of the chilly relations, which were a result of the radicalisation of the regime’s religious policy and of the assassination of Father Popiełuszko. In the eyes of Party dignitaries the priority in the talks regarding the third papal visit was the improvement of the regime’s legitimacy, due to the authority of the pope. It was thought that what would help to break the regime’s international isolation would be the papal audience granted to Wojciech Jaruzelski in January 1987. This audience was one of the regime’s conditions for the pilgrimage. According to communist intelligence reports, this meeting helped Jaruzelski break international isolation and it had considerable international resonance. As a result of this success the authorities were equally hopeful about the pope’s pilgrimage, which they tried to utilise again. The policy of the communist regime before and during this pilgrimage, as in the case of the two previous visits, was formulated by the highest units of the Party. As before, the chief executor of the tasks related to the preparations for the pilgrimage of John Paul II was the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and within its structures, the Security Service. The tasks for the anti-Church structures were the same as in 1983, primarily gathering information about the Church’s plans regarding the pilgrimage and to achieve the objective of the regime’s policy in the 1980s. It was expressly stated in one document of Operational Case ‘Zorza II’ [aurora]: “to push the Church into moderately constructive positions without the need to open another front and waste energy and potential.”[37] What was deemed most detrimental to the interests of the regime was the activity of those priests known for their opposition involvement in the activation of anti-socialist milieus.

The homilies John Paul II delivered during the visit and their principal message, which focused on the issued of freedom and human rights, met with protests and the intervention of the regime. The most criticised was the mass in the Gdańsk housing development of Zaspa, when John Paul II uttered the famous words: “I wish to speak about you and in a certain sense for you.”[38] In order to humour the authorities, on the last day of his visit the Holy Father again met Wojciech Jaruzelski. But this did not change their opinion of ‘the pope’s homilies and speeches, which were deemed confrontational in secret reports. But the negative consequences of the pilgrimage became apparent much sooner and were reflected in analyses made by communist dignitaries regarding the previous visits in 1979 and 1983.[39] In fact most top Party dignitaries, except the First Secretary himself viewed the pilgrimage as a defeat, primarily in the sphere of propaganda. Many pointed out the failure to promote the message of ‘two great Poles’: Wojciech Jaruzelski and John Paul II. Mieczysław Rakowski believed that the pilgrimage was a defeat both for the regime and the Party’s First Secretary himself.[40] In his Diaries Rakowski wrote:

So I think the winner is the pope and Church. Undoubtedly, the pope has built up the opposition’s self-esteem and set a militant tone for the Church. The ‘two great Poles’ thing did not work out as the TV [and the press – R.Ł.] called WJ’s meeting with JPII at the Vatican last January. As it turned out, one great Pole hurt another great Pole. I heard that the General was surprised by what JPII did, because when he spoke at the Vatican he was under the impression that the pope wouldn’t do anything in Poland that would deprive the pilgrimage of its religious character. And we’re in it now![41]

Wreathes and banners at the tomb of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko and the area of the Stanislaw Kostka Church (Security Service operational photograph) November 3, 1983 – December 31, 1984 (AIPN)

Wojciech Jaruzelski himself, in a conversation with Erich Honecker, admitted that his strategy to destroy the Church had failed. Secret reports of state security indicated a similar picture of the visit. Although it was officially reiterated that the visit was a success for the regime, the leading party dignitaries knew that it was not true. The pilgrimage showed them how important the role of the Church in Polish society was, and that no important socio-political problems could be resolved without the Church’s hierarchy, which certainly was one of the reasons behind further liberalisation of religious policy. The pilgrimage marked the beginning of the decomposition of the system, and as Antoni Dudek and Ryszard Gryz pointed out: “it was one of the foundations of the systemic transformation in Poland.”[42] John Paul II played a significant role in this process, because he was a staunch supporter of the idea of Round Table talks, and, later of the systemic changes.

Toward systemic transformation

After the third papal pilgrimage the communist regime’s policy toward the Church was very inconsistent. Although for Wojciech Jaruzelski it was one of the most important elements of the state policy, it is difficult to call it well thought out. The plans to harness the Church to boost the regime were not dropped. Even though the earlier programme of engaging the Episcopate in creating a new socio-political configuration proved impossible in view of the attitude of the bishops and the pope, attempts to implement it, at least in part, were continued. Jaruzelski presented his opinion on relations with the Church in a conversation with Erich Honecker in 1987. He said then that the Church was “like a hump that cannot be removed surgically, which one has to live with. I believe that from the medical point of view this cannot be done. We have tried several times in the past to shrug it off, but it’s impossible.”[43] We can find some resonance in a report of the Office for Religious Affairs for 1988: “The basic [...] method of exerting influence on the sociopolitical functioning of churches and religious organisations was the proposal to cooperate with the state for the common good and social revival. The year 1988 was fraught with initiatives, mainly in the social sphere and in public life.”[44]

Evidently, the authorities were unable to cope with the Church’s dualist stance, as it benefited from the dialogue, but did not become too deeply involved in those initiatives in which the Party leadership would wish to see it. The authorities were further confused by support offered to moderate opposition by most Episcopate members and by an unequivocal support for Solidarity expressed by several Church hierarchs. On the other hand, Czesław Kiszczak’s Ministry of Internal Affairs still kept some rebellious priests under surveillance and repressed them. Also, functionaries from Section IV of Department IV of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or Group D did not abandon the brutal methods they applied in the individual provinces. Socially active priests were still stigmatised and slanderous rumours were circulated about them. Until the last days of the communist rule in Poland, priests known for their support of the opposition were killed in mysterious circumstances. Jaruzelski called his team’s policy toward the Church the programme of “combat and concord”. It failed, because the bishops took advantage of new opportunities offered by dialogue with the authorities, but they had no intention of assuming any responsibility for the regime’s policy.

In the last days of communist rule, the authorities found it particularly important to obtain information on the Church’s position regarding the planned Round Table talks, and their future course. So they analysed the attitude of the bishops and of the rank and file clergy to a possible participation of Solidarity in the planned elections. One of the more significant Department IV documents reads:

The current situation in the country, in particular the preparations for ‘round table’ talks evoke heated informal debates within the Church leadership. The discussions and debates on this subject concern such issues as the divisions within the opposition: their possible participation in parliamentary elections, the activity of the Citizens Committee with Lech Wałęsa and the ‘round table’ Solidarity initiatives.[45]

Let it be stressed that both the hierarchical Church and the rank and file clergy favoured the idea of Round Table talks and an accord with the opposition. The authorities welcomed the engagement of the Church’s Table talks and that the hierarchy was their guarantor. As Jan Żaryn aptly put it: “No doubt, the Church proved to be a useful tool for the communists and a ‘cushion’ in case of the expected political collapse of the Party. In the popular perception, the presence of the hierarchs added credibility to the results of the talks, which enabled the nation to be rid of communism without bloodshed.”[46]

The Church, despite efforts by the regime, did not remain neutral during the election in June 1989 (the regime tried to bribe it with a law on the Church’s legal personality, something the bishops had been trying to achieve for many years). The Church’s official position regarding the coming elections was specified in an Episcopate Conference communiqué; the bishops wrote that the elections are a chance for changes “in the spirit of responsibility for common good.[47] Some of the hierarchs pointed out that they could not be indifferent about who would become MP and whether he guides himself by Christian values. The authorities, disappointed with such a stance of the Church hierarchy and clergy activity, applied all kinds of pressure in order to achieve ‘political neutrality’ of the Church: from protest voiced at a meeting of the Joint Commission to ‘prophylactic’ conversations with bishops in order to obtain the assurance that the clergy in their dioceses would remain neutral with respect to the elections.

The engagement of the clergy in Solidarity’s election campaign proved decisive for the success of the Citizen’s Committee ticket. It was universal and was tolerated by the bishops. It took different forms; the documents of the following:

– offering organisational, moral, and material help in the formation of election committees of the Solidarity Citizen’s Committee, collecting signatures on election lists for MPs and senators, and presenting their profiles;

– opening church buildings for election purposes of the opposition (rallies, posting election materials, and enabling the use of other forms of election propaganda) when the election was in full swing;

– instructing (publicly from the pulpit) the broadly understood electorate by some bishops and some priests and monks, to vote for Solidarity candidates;

– publicly discrediting, by part of the clergy, both the entire heritage of people’s Poland and the efforts of the Party and the government intended to overcome the crisis, and deprecating the existing systemic solution, both on the scale of our country and of the socialist community.[48]

It was this comprehensive help of the clergy that proved to be one of the important elements of the success of the Solidarity ticket and the beginning of the end of the communist party in Poland. The result of the June ’89 elections was a great surprise for the regime, as none of the Party leaders expected such a tremendous election defeat. Many of them, talking about the causes pointed out the Church’s role and the support, which the clergy had given to the Solidarity Citizens’ Committee. Mieczysław Rakowski wrote openly: “The Church bears most of the responsibility for what happened.”[49]

Summary

In the 1980s, the state-Church relations had a definitely different character than in the former decades. It stemmed mainly from fundamental changes in the regime’s religious policy. Although surveillance and repressions were continued, the priorities of the leading Party dignitaries were completely different. The most important was to use the Church to alleviate the tensions and to improve the regime’s legitimacy, which was particularly poor during the martial law. These two objectives formed the regime’s policy through the entire 1980s. One exception was the tightening of anti-Church policy following the negative assessment of the result of the pope’s pilgrimage.

Nevertheless, the liberalisation of many elements of religious policy did not prove effective, for two basic reasons. First, it was not consistently applied, because the regime implemented measures that must antagonise the Church hierarchy and the authorities (such as the de-crucification operation or the sharpening of anti-Church propaganda. Second, the Church took advantage of dialogue and obtained certain concessions, but had no intention of becoming involved in those initiatives of the regime that sought the improvement of its legalisation.

Although the liberalisation policy failed to yield the expected results. One should also mention the Church’s restrained reaction to martial law, Wojciech Jaruzelski’s meeting with John Paul II at the Vatican in January 1987 or the role of the bishops in the Round Table talks. The 1980s were also a time of the government’s series of defeats such as the result of the two papal pilgrimages or the lost elections of 1989, largely due to clergy support of the opposition. The defeat of the religious policy of the regime and its weakness in its relations with the Church were aptly described by Paweł Kowal: “Without a strong Catholic Church, Jaruzelski’s regime would have been different. One proof of the weakness of the general’s team is precisely the fact that although formally speaking, the Church did not accept the offer of concord and did not assume co-responsibility for their policy, in functional terms it did.”

[1] In order to improve Poland’s image abroad, in 1986 the authorities declared amnesty for political prisoners, and most were released.

[2] Archiwum Akt Nowych [Archive of New Records], (later: AAN) Komitet Centralny Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej [Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party] (later: KC PZPR), LII/205, Wydział Społeczno-Prawny, Sektor ds. Polityki Wyznaniowej i Narodowościowej, Koncepcja stosunków państwo–Kościół, Wydział Administracyjny KC PZPR [Socio-Legal Department, Sector for Denominational and National Policy, A Concept of Relationship between the State and the Church, Administrative Department of KC PZPR], July 2, 1982, p. 53.

[3] Stan wojenny w dokumentach władz PRL (1980–1983), ed. B. Kopka, G. Majchrzak, Warsaw 2001, p. 228.

[4] Contract elections were held on the basis of the agreements made during the Round Table talks, where it was decided that in free competitive elections 35 per cent of the mandates would be won, while the remaining 65 per cent were given to the coalition government.

[5] Citizens’ Committees were structures constituted by Solidarity for the time of elections in June 1989 to organise the political campaign.

[6] T. Isakowicz-Zaleski, Moje życie nielegalne, Cracow 2012, p. 81.

[7] AAN, KC PZPR, LII/205, Koncepcja stosunków państwo–Kościół, Wydział Administracyjny KC PZPR [A Concept of Relationship between the State and the Church, Administrative Department of KC PZPR], July 2, 1982, pp. 55–56; quoted in: R. Łatka, Polityka władz PRL wobec Kościoła katolickiego w województwie krakowskim w latach 1980–1989, Cracow 2016, p. 199.

[8] On June 5, 1989, Poland saw the first at least partly free parliamentary election. It was part of a political contract between the authorities and the opposition, negotiated during ‘Round Table’ Talks. Only 35 per cent of Sejm seats were to be filled in an open electoral contest, while the Senate election was completely free.

[9] P. Raina, Kardynał Wyszyński i Solidarność, Warsaw 2005, pp. 14, 30–31.

[10] The Committee for Social Self-Defence KOR (Komitet Samoobrony Społecznej Komitetu Obrony Robotników, KSS KOR) was an opposition organisation, established in 1977 after the Workers’ Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR) fulfilled its main mission, i.e. the release of workers detained after the June, 76 protests. It was a major opposition organisation before Solidarity.

[11] R. Łatka, “Zmienna amplituda stosunków państwo–Kościół katolicki w PRL w latach 80. XX w.”, Res Historica 39 (2015), p. 227. The August 1980 protests led to the establishment of the Solidarity independent trade union, which defended workers’ rights in communist Poland. Subsequently, farmers demanded that the authorities consent to the establishment of the farmers’ independent trade union. Ultimately, after farmers’ strikes and protests, and the Episcopate’s pressure, in May 1981 the farmers’ Solidarity was established.

[12] AAN, UdsW, 115/3, Protokół posiedzenia Komisji Wspólnej przedstawicieli rządu i Episkopatu z dnia 24 IX 1980 r. [The minutes from the session of the Joint Commission formed by the representatives of the Government and the Episcopate from September 24, 1980].

[13] R. Łatka, Polityka władz PRL..., pp. 108–109.

[14] On December 13, 1981, the regime imposed martial law. In the eyes of the opposition the date symbolised Wojciech Jaruzelski’s treason and servitude to the Soviet Union.

[15] Pro memoria, December 15, 1981, Archiwum Prymasa Polski [the Archive of the Primate of Poland] (later: APP); quoted in: J. Żaryn, “Episkopat Polski wobec wprowadzenia stanu wojennego” [in:] Kościół i społeczeństwo wobec stanu wojennego, ed. W.J. Wysocki, Warsaw 2004, p. 16.

[16] The miners went on strike to protest against martial law. The coalmine was then raided by troops and militia forces, and as a result 9 miners were killed and 23 wounded.

[17] J. Glemp, Nie ma ważniejszej rzeczy w wymiarach ziemskich niż życie ludzkie. Kazanie podczas modlitwy Gniezna o pokój. Gniezno, the Primatial Cathedral Basilica. December 17, 1981; quoted in: A.F. Dziuba, “Pierwsze reakcje Episkopatu Polski na stan wojenny” [in:] Kościół i społeczeństwo..., p. 42.

[18] During the martial law Solidarity activists organised regular protests. They peaked on August 31 (to commemorated the anniversary of the birth of the trade union), or to mark Constitution Day (May 3) or Independence Day (November 11).

[19] M. Kindziuk, Kardynał Józef Glemp. Ostatni taki prymas, Warsaw 2010.

[20] R. Łatka, Polityka władz PRL..., p. 195.

[21] Tajne dokumenty państwo–Kościół 1980–1989, London–Warsaw 1993, pp. 160–163.

[22] R. Łatka, Polityka władz PRL..., p. 195.

[23] Ibidem, p. 198.

[24] AAN, KC PZPR, LII/205, Wydział Społeczno-Prawny, Sektor ds. Polityki Wyznaniowej i Narodowościowej, Węzłowe problemy polityki wyznaniowej. Projekt tez [Socio-Legal Department, Sector for Denominational and National Policy, the key problems of denominational policy. The project of theses], April 27, 1982, p. 4.

[25] Ibidem, p. 44.

[26] AAN, KC PZPR, LI/318, Wydział Administracyjny, Sektor Społeczno-Polityczny, Polityka wyznaniowa 1982–1983, Węzłowe problemy polityki wyznaniowej PRL [Administrative Department, Socio-Political Sector, Denominational Policy in the years 1982–1983, the key problems of denominational policy of Polish People’s Republic], May 11, 1982, p. 13.

[27] AAN. KC PZPR. LII/205, Wydział Administracyjny, Sektor ds. Polityki Wyznaniowej i Narodowościowej, Koncepcja Stosunków państwo–Kościół, Wydział Administracyjny KC PZPR [Socio-Legal Department, Sector for Denominational and National Policy, A Concept of the Relationship between the State and the Church, Administrative Department of KC PZPR], July 2, 1982, p. 49.

[28] R. Łatka, Polityka władz PRL..., p. 217.

[29] Tajne dokumenty państwo–Kościół 1980–1989..., pp. 206–212.

[30] Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej [Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance] (later: AIPN) Kr, 08/ 296, Object Case “Zorza”, Vol. 8, pp. 175–178. Plan przedsięwzięć Wydziału III związanych z przyjazdem papieża do Polski [The planned tasks of Department III connected with the visit of John Paul II to Poland], May 25, 1983.

[31] R. Łatka, Polityka władz PRL..., p. 316.

[32] G. Weigel, Witness to Hope. The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999), pp. 463–464.

[33] J. Żaryn, “Wstęp” [in:] Aparat represji wobec księdza Jerzego Popiełuszki 1982–1984, Vol. 1, ed. J. Mysiakowska, Warsaw 2009, p. 33.

[34] Tajne dokumenty państwo–Kościół 1980–1989..., pp. 334, 338.

[35] Father Jerzy Popiełuszko was Solidarity’s most important chaplain. His services for the Fatherland gathered thousands and led to interventions of the authorities, which demanded that his anticommunist tone be dropped.

[36] These three formed the most important group of Jaruzelski’s advisors. They put together several memorials, where they recommended, among others, that the Church be employed to tone down the popular mood.

[37] AIPN Kr, 08/315, Object Case “Zorza II”, Vol. 7, pp. 191–195.

[38] Jan Paweł II, Trzecia wizyta duszpasterska w Polsce 8–14 czerwca 1987, eds. S. Dziwisz et al., Rome 1987, p. 172.

[39] Tajne dokumenty..., p. 513.

[40] Rakowski was Jaruzelski’s trusted advisor; 1972-1989 Member of Parliament; 1988-1989 prime minister and the last Party chief.

[41] M.F. Rakowski, Dzienniki polityczne 1987–1990, Warsaw 2005, p. 90.

[42] A. Dudek, R. Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce..., p. 431.

[43] “Zapis stenograficzny rozmowy Ericha Honeckera z Wojciechem Jaruzelskim, 16 września 1987” (fragments) [in:] Polska 1986–1989: koniec systemu, Vol. 3: Dokumenty, eds. A. Dudek, A. Friszke, Warsaw 1999, p. 52.

[44] AAN, UdsW, 145/23, Założenia polityki wyznaniowej państwa w 1988 r. Polacy w Watykanie 1987, Informacja o realizacji założeń polityki wyznaniowej państwa w 1988 [The objectives of the country’s denominational policy in 1988, the Poles in the Vatican, information about the realisation of the objectives of the country’s denominational policy in 1988], no date, p. 30.

[45] AIPN, 0713/311, Vol. 9, Informacje dzienne Departamentu IV MSW, 6 X 1988–18 I 1989 r., Załącznik do informacji z 12 I 1988 r. dotyczący opinii i ocen kierownictwa Kościoła na temat aktualnej sytuacji w środowiskach opozycyjnych [Daily information of Departament IV of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 10/6/1988–01/18/1989, an addendum to the information from 01/12/1988 concerning the Church leaders’ opinion and evaluation of the current situation within the opposition], p. 298.

[46] J. Żaryn, Kościół w PRL, Warsaw 2004, p. 166.

[47] A. Dudek, Reglamentowana rewolucja. Rozkład dyktatury komunistycznej w Polsce 1988–1990, Cracow 2009, p. 284.

[48] R. Łatka, Polityka władz PRL..., p. 464.

[49] M. Rakowski, Dzienniki polityczne 1987–1990..., pp. 440–441.

Selected bibliography

Published sources

Aparat represji wobec księdza Jerzego Popiełuszki 1982–1984, Vol. 1, Introduction J. Żaryn, ed. J. Mysiakowska (Warsaw, 2009).

Balbus Tomasz, Stróżyna Katarzyna, ‘Ojczyznę wolną racz nam wrócić Panie…’ Komunistyczna bezpieka wobec kardynała Henryka Gulbinowicza w latach 1970–1990 (Wrocław, 2008).

Friszke Andrzej, PRL wobec Kościoła. Akta 1970–1978 (Warsaw, 2010).

Komunikaty Konferencji Episkopatu Polski 1945–2000, ed. J. Żaryn (Poznań, 2006).

Kościół w stanie wojennym. Wybór dokumentów z Archiwum Akt Nowych, eds. T. Krawczak, C. Wilmowski (Warsaw, 2008).

Metody pracy operacyjnej aparatu bezpieczeństwa wobec Kościołów i związków wyznaniowych 1945–1989, ed. A. Dziurok (Warsaw, 2004).

Niezłomni ku prawdzie i wolności. Komunistyczna bezpieka wobec kard. Wojtyły, eds. J. Marecki, F. Musiał (Cracow, 2009).

Niezłomni. W służbie Boga i Polski. Komunistyczna bezpieka wobec kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego, eds. J. Marecki, F. Musiał (Cracow, 2014).

Nigdy przeciw Bogu. Komunistyczna bezpieka wobec biskupów polskich, eds. J. Marecki, F. Musiał (Warsaw–Cracow, 2007).

Obchody millenijne 1966 roku. W świetle dokumentów Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnętrznych (Warsaw, 1998).

Operacja Zorza II. Służba Bezpieczeństwa i Komitet Wojewódzki PZPR wobec wizyty Jana Pawła II w Trójmieście, eds. S. Cenckiewicz, M. Kruk (Warsaw–Gdańsk, 2008).

Pielgrzymki Jana Pawła II do Krakowa w oczach SB. Wybór dokumentów, ed. R. Łatka, (Cracow, 2012).

Plany pracy Departamentu IV MSW na lata 1972–1979, eds. M. Biełaszko, A. Piekarska, P. Tomasik, C. Wilanowski (Warsaw, 2007).

Raina Peter, Kościół katolicki a państwo w świetle dokumentów 1945–1989, Vol. 1 (Poznań, 1994).

Raina Peter, Kościół katolicki a państwo w świetle dokumentów 1945–1989, Vol. 2 (Poznań, 1995).

Raina Peter, Kościół w PRL. Kościół katolicki a państwo w świetle dokumentów 1945–1989, Vol. 3: 1975–1989 (Pelpin, 1996).

Raina Peter, Rozmowy z władzami PRL. Arcybiskup Dąbrowski w służbie Kościoła i narodu, Vol. 1 (Warsaw, 1995).

Stefan kardynał Wyszyński prymas Polski w dokumentach aparatu bezpieczeństwa PRL (1953–1956), ed. B. Piec (Warsaw, 2001).

Tajne dokumenty Państwo–Kościół 1960–1980 (London, 1996).

Wizyta Jana Pawła II w Polsce 1979. Dokumenty KC PZPR i MSW, eds. A. Friszke, M. Zaremba (Warsaw, 2005).

Studies

Anusz Anna, Anusz Andrzej, Samotnie wśród wiernych. Kościół wobec przemian politycznych w Polsce (1944–1994) (Warsaw, 1994).

Aparat bezpieczeństwa wobec kurii biskupich w Polsce, ed. A. Dziurok (Warsaw, 2009).

Bejze Bohdan, Kronika Soboru Watykańskiego II (Częstochowa, 2000).

Bibliografia katolickich czasopism religijnych w Polsce 1945–1989, ed. D. Wielgat (Lublin, 1996).

Brama do wolności. III Pielgrzymka Jana Pawła II do Polski, eds. Z. Struzik, P. Skibiński (Warsaw, 2012).

Czaczkowska Ewa, Kardynał Wyszyński. Biografia (Cracow, 2013).

Dominiczak Henryk, Organy bezpieczeństwa PRL w walce z Kościołem katolickim 1944–1990 w świetle dokumentów MSW (Warsaw, 1997).

Droga do stabilizacji administracji kościelnej na Ziemiach Zachodnich i Północnych po II wojnie światowej, ed. W. Kucharski (Wrocław, 2013).

Dudek Antoni, Gryz Ryszard, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce (1945–1989) (Cracow, 2006).

Dudek Antoni, “Krótkotrwała normalizacja w stosunkach Kościół–państwo (1956–1957)” [in:] Polska 1944/45–1989. Studia i Materiały (1995), Vol. 1.

Dudek Antoni, Państwo i Kościół w Polsce 1945–1970 (Cracow, 1995).

Duszpasterstwa środowiskowe w latach 1945–1989. Archidiecezja krakowska, eds. C. Kuta, J. Marecki (Cracow, 2014).

Eisler Jerzy, “Stefan Wyszyński i Władysław Gomułka – dwie wizje Polski” [in:] Pojednanie i polityka. Polsko-niemieckie inicjatywy pojednania w latach sześćdziesiątych XX wieku a polityka odprężenia, eds. F. Boll, W. Wysocki, K. Ziemer (Warsaw, 2010).

Franczyk Jan Leszek, Na fundamencie krzyża. Kościół katolicki w Nowej Hucie w latach 1949–1989 (Cracow, 2004).

Grajewski Andrzej, Kompleks Judasza. Kościół zraniony (Poznań, 1999).

Golik Dawid, Musiał Filip, Władysław Gurgacz. Jezuita wyklęty (Cracow, 2014).

Gryz Ryszard, “Między liberalizacją a dezintegracją. Stosunki państwo–Kościół w latach siedemdziesiątych” [in:] Stosunki państwo–Kościół w Polsce w latach 1944–2010. Studia i materiały, ed. R. Łatka (Cracow, 2012).

Gryz Ryszard, Państwo a Kościół w Polsce 1945–1956 na przykładzie województwa kieleckiego (Cracow, 1999).

Gryz Ryszard, Pozwolić czy nie? Władze PRL wobec budownictwa katolickich obiektów sakralnych w latach 1971–1980 (Kielce, 2007).

Gucewicz Daniel, Próba sił? Rok 1966 w Gdańsku (Gdańsk, 2014).

Halecki Oskar, Tysiąclecie Polski katolickiej (Rome, 1966).

Isakowicz-Zaleski Tadeusz, Księża wobec bezpieki. Na przykładzie archidiecezji krakowskiej (Cracow, 2007).

Kąkol Kazimierz, Spowiedź ‘pogromcy’ Kościoła (Olsztyn, 1994).

Kersten Krystyna, Narodziny systemu władzy. Polska 1943–1948 (Poznań, 1990).

Kindziuk Milena, Kardynał Józef Glemp. Ostatni taki prymas (Warsaw, 2010).

Kisielewski Stefan, Na czym polega socjalizm? Stosunki państwo–Kościół w PRL (Poznań, 1990).

Kluby Inteligencji Katolickiej jako przestrzeń działań niezależnych w latach osiemdziesiątych XX wieku, ed. K. Białecki (Warsaw–Poznań, 2014).

“Komunizm i religia w Polsce – trwanie i zmiana”, Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość 1 (2005).

Komu służył PAX, ed. S. Bober (Warsaw, 2008).

Konopka Hanna, Religia w szkołach Polski Ludowej. Sprawa nauczania religii w polityce państwa (1944–1961) (Białystok, 1997).

Kościół katolicki w czasach komunistycznej dyktatury. Między bohaterstwem a agenturą, Vol. 1: Studia i Materiały, eds. R. Terlecki, J. Szczepaniak (Cracow, 2007).

Kościół katolicki w czasach komunistycznej dyktatury. Między bohaterstwem a agenturą, Vol. 2: Studia i Materiały, eds. R. Terlecki, J. Szczepaniak (Cracow, 2008).

Kościół katolicki w czasach komunistycznej dyktatury. Między bohaterstwem a agenturą, Vol. 3: Studia i Materiały, eds. J. Szczepaniak, M. Lasota (Cracow, 2010).

Kościół katolicki w realiach władzy komunistycznej na Pomorzu Środkowym w latach 1945–1989, eds. T. Ceynowa, P. Knap (Szczecin, 2011).

Kościół i kultura niezależna, ed. B. Tracz (Katowice, 2011).

Kościół i prymas Stefan Wyszyński 1956–1966, eds. A. Dziurok, W.J. Wysocki (Katowice–Cracow, 2008).

Kościół i społeczeństwo wobec stanu wojennego, ed. W.J. Wysocki (Warsaw, 2004).

Kościół w godzinie próby 1945–1989. Nieznane dokumenty i świadectwa, eds. T. Balon-Mroczka, J. Szarek (Cracow, 2006).

Kościół w obliczu totalitaryzmów. Zbiór studiów dla uczczenia XXV rocznicy męczeńskiej śmierci księdza Jerzego Popiełuszki. Toruń 16–17 X 2009, eds. W. Polak, W. Rozynkowowski, M. Białkowski, J. Kufel (Toruń, 2010).

Kościoły chrześcijańskie w systemach totalitarnych, eds. J. Kłaczkow, W. Rozynkowski (Toruń, 2012).

Kukołowicz Romuald, W cieniu Prymasa Tysiąclecia. Z profesorem Romualdem Kukołowiczem rozmawia Piotr Bączek (Warsaw, 2001).

Lasota Marek, Donos na Wojtyłę. Karol Wojtyła w teczkach bezpieki (Cracow, 2006).

Lasota Marek, “Informacja o działalności komórek ‘D’ pionu IV byłej Służby Bezpieczeństwa”, Biuletyn IPN 1 (2003).

Lasota Marek, “O raporcie sejmowej komisji poświęconej Samodzielnej Grupie ‘D’ w MSW”, Biuletyn IPN 1 (2003).

Leksykon duchowieństwa represjonowanego w PRL w latach 1945–1989, Vol. 1–3, ed. J. Myszor (Warsaw, 2002–2006).

Łatka Rafał, “Czy prymasa Wyszyńskiego możemy określać mianem realisty politycznego?”, Politeja 25 (2013).

Łatka Rafał, “Krakowskie struktury aparatu państwowego PRL zajmujące się Kościołem katolickim”, Zeszyty Historyczne WiN-u 36 (2012).

Łatka Rafał, “Krakowski etap I pielgrzymki Jana Pawła II do Ojczyzny z perspektywy władz PRL. Próba syntetycznego spojrzenia”, Res Historica 42 (2016).

Łatka Rafał, “Polityka władz Polski ‘ludowej’ wobec Kościoła katolickiego w latach 1944–1979 (przypadek krakowski)”, Zeszyty Historyczne WiN-u, 39 (2014).

Łatka Rafał, Polityka władz PRL wobec Kościoła katolickiego w województwie krakowskim w latach 1980–1989 (Cracow, 2016).

Madajczyk Piotr, Na drodze do pojednania. Wokół orędzia biskupów polskich do biskupów niemieckich z 1965 r. (Warsaw, 1994).

Majchrzak Grzegorz, Kontakt operacyjny ‘Delegat’ vel ‘Libella’ (Warsaw, 2009).

Maniewska Katarzyna, Kościół katolicki w Bydgoszczy wobec prób laicyzacji i dezintegracji społeczeństwa w okresie rządów Edwarda Gierka (1970–1980) (Warsaw, 2007).

Marecki Józef, “Kościół wobec wyborów w 1947 r.” [in:] Koniec jałtańskich złudzeń. Sfałszowane wybory – 19 I 1947, ed. M. Wenklar (Cracow, 2007).

Marecki Józef, “Likwidacja niższych seminariów zakonnych na terenie woj. Krakowskiego” [in:] Kościół katolicki w czasach komunistycznej dyktatury. Między bohaterstwem a agenturą, Vol. 1: Studia i materiały, eds. R. Terlecki, J. Szczepaniak (Cracow, 2007).

Marecki Józef, “Pani niepodległa – siostra szarytka Izabela Maria Zofia Łuszczkiewicz” [in:] Niezłomni ludzie Kościoła. Sylwetki, ed. J. Żaryn (Cracow, 2011).

Marecki Józef, “Priorytety polityki wyznaniowej w Polsce ‘ludowej’ w latach 1944–1949”, Glaukopis 33 (2016).

Marecki Józef, Zakony pod presją bezpieki. Aparat bezpieczeństwa wobec wspólnot zakonnych na terenie województwa krakowskiego 1944–1975 (Cracow, 2009).

Marek Łucja, ‘Kler to nasz wróg.’ Polityka władz państwowych wobec Kościoła katolickiego na terenie województwa katowickiego w latach 1956–1970 (Katowice, 2009).

Marek Łucja, “Msze święte za Ojczyznę”, Biuletyn IPN 5–6 (2009).

Marek Łucja, “‘Oni atakują, my się bronimy.’ Stosunki Państwo–Kościół w latach 1956–1970” [in:] Stosunki Państwo–Kościół w Polsce 1944–2010, ed. R. Łatka (Cracow, 2013).

Marek Łucja, Bortlik-Dźwierzyńska Monika, Za Marksem bez Boga. Laicyzacja życia społecznego w Polsce w latach 1945–1989 (Katowice, 2014).

Micewski Andrzej, Kardynał Wyszyński, prymas i mąż stanu (Paris, 1982).

Micewski Andrzej, Kościół wobec ‘Solidarności’ i stanu wojennego (Paris, 1987).

Michalski Krzysztof, Działalność Komisji Wspólnej przedstawicieli Rządu PRL i Episkopatu Polski 1980–1989 (Warsaw, 2012).

Milenium czy Tysiąclecie, ed. B. Noszczak (Warsaw, 2006).

Millenium polskie. Walka o rząd dusz, ed. C. Wilanowski (Warsaw, 2009).

Mirek Agata, Siostry zakonne w obozach pracy w Polsce w latach 1954–1956 (Lublin, 2009).

Mirek Agata, Żeńskie zgromadzenia zakonne w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej wobec totalitaryzmu komunistycznego (Warsaw, 2012).

Musiał Filip, Podręcznik bezpieki. Teoria pracy operacyjnej SB w świetle wydawnictw resortowych MSW (1970–1989) (Cracow, 2007).

Musiał Filip, “‘Zakres pracy… bez zmian.’ Wydział IV SB w Krakowie w latach 1975–1978” [in:] idem, Raj grabarzy Narodu. Studia i materiały do dziejów aparatu represji w Polsce ‘ludowej’ 1945–1989 (Cracow, 2010).

Myszor Jerzy, Historia diecezji katowickiej (Katowice, 1999).

Niezłomni ludzie Kościoła. Sylwetki, ed. J. Żaryn (Cracow, 2011).

Nitecki Piotr, Biskupi Kościoła w Polsce. Słownik biograficzny (Warsaw, 1992).

Nitecki Piotr, Znak zwycięstwa. Ks. Jerzy Popiełuszko 1947–1984 (Warsaw, 2002).

Noszczak Barłomiej, Polityka państwa wobec Kościoła Rzymskokatolickiego w Polsce w okresie internowania prymasa Stefana Wyszyńskiego 1953–1956 (Warsaw, 2008).

Noszczak Bartłomiej, ‘Sacrum’ czy ‘profanum’? – Spór o istotę obchodów Milenium polskiego (1949–1966) (Warsaw, 2002).

Nowak Andrzej, Kościół na straży polskiej wolności, Vol. 4: Czas walki z Bogiem (Cracow, 2011).

Olszewski Daniel, Z zagadnień religioznawstwa (Łódź, 1988).

Orszulik Alojzy, Czas przełomu. Notatki ks. Alojzego Orszulika z rozmów z władzami PRL w latach 1981–1989 (Warsaw–Ząbki, 2006).

Papież musiał zginąć: wyjaśnienia Ali Agcy, Introduction and ed. A. Grajewski (Katowice, 2011).

Pielgrzymka nadziei. II wizyta Jana Pawła II w Ojczyźnie (Warsaw, 2014).

Pawlicka Katarzyna, Polityka władz wobec Kościoła katolickiego (grudzień 1970–październik 1978) (Warsaw, 2004).

Piotrowski Mirosław, Ludzie bezpieki w walce z Narodem i Kościołem. Służba Bezpieczeństwa w Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej w latach 1944–1978 – Centrala (Lublin, 2010).

Raina Peter, Arcybiskup Dąbrowski – rozmowy watykańskie (Warsaw, 2001).

Raina Peter, Cele polityki władz PRL wobec Watykanu. Tajne dokumenty 1967–1989 (Warsaw, 2001).

Raina Peter, Jan Paweł Drugi, Prymas i Episkopat o stanie wojennym (London, 1982).

Raina Peter, Kardynał Wyszyński i Solidarność (Warsaw, 2005).

Raina Peter, Kardynał Wyszyński. Konflikty roku millenijnego (Warsaw, 2000).

Raina Peter, Kardynał Wyszyński. Orędzie Biskupów a reakcja władz (Warsaw, 1995).

Raina Peter, Kościół– państwo w świetle akt Wydziałów do spraw Wyznań. 1967–1968: próby kontroli Kościoła, wydarzenia marcowe, interwencja sierpniowa w Czechosłowacji (Warsaw, 1994).

Raina Peter, Losy sióstr zakonnych w PRL. Wysiedlenie–obozy–uwolnienie. 1954–1956 (Warsaw, 2004).

Raina Peter, Stefan Kardynał Wyszyński Prymas Polski, Vol. 1 (London, 1979).

Represje wobec duchownych i konsekrowanych w PRL w latach 1944–1989, ed. A. Grześkowiak (Lublin, 2004).

Represje wobec osób duchownych i zakonnych na terenie woj. krakowskiego 1944–1975. Leksykon biograficzny, ed. J. Marecki, Vol. 1–2 (Cracow, 2014–2016).

Represje wobec sióstr zakonnych w PRL. Obozy pracy dla zakonnic (1954–1956), ed. A. Mirek (Lublin, 2005).

Romaniuk Marian Piotr, Życie, twórczość i posługa Stefana Kardynała Wyszyńskiego Prymasa Tysiąclecia (Warsaw, 1994).

Ruzikowski Tadeusz, “Tajni współpracownicy pionów operacyjnych aparatu bezpieczeństwa 1950–1984”, Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość 1 (2003).

Skwara Michał, Grajewski Andrzej, Agca nie był sam. Wokół udziału komunistycznych służb specjalnych w zamachu na Jana Pawła II (Katowice, 2015).

Społeczeństwo–państwo–Kościół (1945–2000). Materiały z ogólnopolskiej konferencji naukowej. Szczecin, 15–16 VI 2000, ed. A. Kawecki, K. Kowalczyk, A. Kubaj (Szczecin, 2001).

Staszewski Michał Tadeusz, Kościół katolicki o konstytucji (1947–1991) (Warsaw, 1991).

Stosunki państwo–Kościół w Polsce w latach 1944–2010. Studia i materiały, ed. R. Łatka (Cracow, 2012).

Stefan Kardynał Wyszyński wobec Ziem Zachodnich i Północnych (Poznań, 2001).

Terlecki Ryszard, Miecz i tarcza komunizmu. Historia aparatu bezpieczeństwa w Polsce 1944–1990 (Cracow, 2007).

Tokarczuk Ignacy, Krzysztofiński Mariusz, Nie można zdradzić Ewangelii. Rozmowy z arcybiskupem Tokarczukiem (Rzeszów, 2012).

Weigel George, Witness to Hope. The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999).

Wojewoda Zbigniew, Zarys historii Kościoła greckokatolickiego w Polsce w latach 1944–1989 (Cracow, 1994).

Wyszyński Stefan, Zapiski więzienne (Paris, 1982).

Zamiatała Dominik, Caritas. Działalność i likwidacja organizacji. 1945–1950 (Lublin, 2000).

Zawieyski Jerzy, Dzienniki, Vol. 1: Wybór z lat 1955–1959 (Warsaw, 2011).

Zieliński Zygmunt, Educatrix et Advocata. Wychowawca i obrońca. Miejsce Kościoła w dziejach Narodu (Lublin, 2015).

Zieliński Zygmunt, Kościół w Polsce 1944–2007 (Poznań, 2009).

Żaryn Jan, “Dyplomacja PRL wobec Watykanu, czyli traktat o instrumentalnym traktowaniu partnera”, Biuletyn IPN 7 (2002).

Żaryn Jan, Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego w Polsce (1944–1989) (Warsaw, 2003).

Żaryn Jan, Kościół a władza w Polsce 1945–1950 (Warsaw, 1997).

Żaryn Jan, Kościół, Naród, Człowiek, czyli opowieść optymistyczna o Polakach w XX wieku (Warsaw, 2012).

Żaryn Jan, Kościół w Polsce w latach przełomu (1953–1958). Relacje ambasadora RP przy Stolicy Apostolskiej (Warsaw, 2006).

Żaryn Jan, Kościół w PRL (Warsaw, 2004).

Żurek Robert, Kościół rzymskokatolicki w Polsce wobec Ziem Zachodnich i Północnych 1945–1948 (Szczecin, 2015).

Index of names

Adamski Stanisław

Amerio Romano

„Andrzej Albert” zob. Roszkowski Wojciech

Baraniak Antoni

Barcikowski Kazimierz

Bardecki Andrzej

Bareła Stefan

Baziak Eugeniusz

Bączek Piotr

Bednarski Feliks

Bednorz Herbert

Bejze Bohdan

Bensch Teodor

Bernacki Lucjan

Biełaszko Mirosław

Bieniek Juliusz

Bieńkowski Władysław

Bierut Bolesław

Blachnicki Franciszek

Bober Sabina

Bolesław Szczodry

Boll Friedhelm

Boniecki Adam

Breitinger Hilariusz

Breżniew Leonid

Brystygier Julia

Casaroli Agostino

Chajęcki Eugeniusz

Chojnacki Adolf

Choromański Zygmunt

Chruszczow Nikita

Churchill Winston

Ciosek Stanisław

Cyrankiewicz Józef

Cywiński Bohdan

Czaczkowska Ewa

Czuma Hubert

Czyrek Józef

Dąbrowski Bronisław

Deskur Andrzej

Domański Tomasz

Dominiczak Henryk

Drzonek Maciej

Dudek Antoni

Dziuba Andrzej Franciszek

Dziurok Adam

Dziwisz Stanisław

Dzwonkowski Tadeusz

Eisler Jerzy

Fenrych Przemysław

Fijałkowska Barbara

Filipiak Bolesław

Frankowski Edward

Frankowski Jan

Friszke Andrzej

Gierek Edward

Glemp Józef

Gocłowski Tadeusz

Golik Dawid

Gołąbek Marian

Gomułka Władysław

Gontarczyk Piotr

Grabiński Waldemar

Grajewski Andrzej

Gryz Ryszard

Grześkowiak Alicja

Gucewicz Daniel

Gulbinowicz Henryk

Gurgacz Władysław

Halecki Oskar

Hlond August

Honecker Erich

Isakowicz-Zaleski Tadeusz

Jan Paweł II (właśc. Wojtyła Karol)

Jan XXIII (właśc. Roncalli Angelo Giuseppe)

Jancarz Kazimierz

Jankowski Henryk

Jarmoch Edward

Jaroszewicz Piotr

Jaruzelski Wojciech

Jasiński Andrzej

Jastak Hilary

Jop Franciszek

Kaczmarek Czesław

Kaczmarek Ewa

Kałwa Piotr

Kamiński Łukasz

Kania Stanisław

Kantorski Leon

Karabin Stanisław

Kawecki Arkadiusz

Kąkol Kazimierz

Kinaszewska Irena

Kindziuk Milena

Kisielewski Stefan

Kiszczak Czesław

Klepacz Michał

Kliszko Zenon

Kłoczowski Jan Andrzej

Kominek Bolesław

Konopka Hanna

Kopka Bogusław

Korczyńska Marta

Kotlarz Roman

Kowal Paweł

Kowalczyk Honoriusz

Kowalczyk Krzysztof

Kowalów Witold

Kowalski Kazimierz

Kozieł Danuta

Kozub-Ciembroniewicz Wiesław

Kranc Remigiusz

Krasowski Kamil

Kubaj Artur

Kuberski Jerzy

Kubina Teodor

Kucharski Wojciech

Kukołowicz Romuald

Kuroń Jacek

Kurowski Tadeusz

Kurzeja Józef

Lasota Marek

Lipski Marian

Lipski Witold

Loranc Władysław

Łatka Rafał

Łopatka Adam

Łuszczkiewicz Izabela

Macharski Franciszek

Machcewicz Paweł

Madajczyk Piotr

Majchrowski Jacek M.

Majchrzak Grzegorz

Małkowski Stanisław

Maniewska Katarzyna

Mardyła Przemysław

Marecki Józef

Marek Łucja

Marszałek Rudolf

Materski Edward

Mazowiecki Tadeusz

Merker Aleksander

Meyer Albert

Micewski Andrzej

Michaliszyn Bronisław

Michalski Krzysztof

Michnik Adam

Mikołajczyk Stanisław

Milewski Mirosław

Milik Karol

Mirek Agata

Miziołek Władysław

Montini Giovanni Battista zob. Paweł VI

Musiał Filip

Mysiakowska Jolanta

Myszor Jerzy

Niedzielak Stefan

Nitecki Piotr

Nossol Alfons

Noszczak Bartłomiej

Nowicki Edmund

Oborski Piotr

Ochab Edward

Okoniewski Wojciech

Olszewski Daniel

Orszulik Alojzy

„Osiec”

Osóbka-Morawski Edward

Pacelli Eugenio zob. Pius XII

Palmowski Władysław

Papée Kazimierz

Pasich Dominika

Pater Józef

Paweł VI (właśc. Montini Giovanni Battista)

Pawłow Witalij

Pawłowski Antoni

Pawłowski Tomasz

Persak Krzysztof

Piasecki Bolesław

Piasecki Bronisław

Piec Bogdan

Piekarska Anna

Pius XII (właśc. Pacelli Eugenio)

Poggi Luigi

Polak Wojciech

Popiełuszko Jerzy

Pożoga Władysław

Pruszyński Ksawery

Przybyszewski Bolesław

Pytel Grzegorz

Radkiewicz Stanisław

Raina Peter

Rakowski Mieczysław Franciszek

Rolleczek Natalia

Romaniuk Marian Piotr

Roncalli Angelo Giuseppe zob. Jan XXIII

Roosevelt Franklin Delano

Rospond Stanisław

Rostkowski Marek A.

Roszkowski Wojciech („Andrzej Albert”)

Rozwadowski Józef

Rubin Władysław

Salij Jacek

Sapieha Adam Stefan

Siedlecka Joanna

Siedziako Michał

Sierow Iwan Aleksandrowicz

Siri Giuseppe

Skuli B.

Skwara Michał

Słowik Aleksandra

Sowiński Paweł

Spałek Robert

Splett Carl Maria

Stalin Józef

Stanisław ze Szczepanowa, św.

Staszewski Michał Tadeusz

Stojecki Kazimierz

Straszak G.

Straszewski Konrad

Suchowolec Stanisław

Sudoł Tomasz

Szczepaniak Jan

Sznajder Andrzej

Szymański Andrzej

Światło Józef

Świrski Ignacy

Tarnowska Maria

Terlecki Ryszard

Tokarczuk Ignacy

Tomasik Paweł

Topolski Jerzy

Trószczyński Zygmunt

Tyszkiewicz Barbara

Urban Jerzy

Wałęsa Lech

Weigel George

Wejman Grzegorz

Wenklar Michał

Wesoły Szczepan

Wicha Władysław

Wielgat Danuta

Wilanowski Cyprian

Wilczyński Tomasz

Wiltgen Ralph

Wiśniewski Ludwik

Włosik Bogdan

Wojewoda Zbigniew

Wojtyła Karol zob. Jan Paweł II

Wolski Władysław

Wronka Andrzej

Wysocki Wiesław Jan

Wyszyński Stefan

Zając Marek

Zając Miriam Halina

Zamiatała Dominik

Zaremba Marcin

Zawieyski Jerzy

Zieja Jan

Zieliński Zygmunt

Ziemer Klaus

Zych Sylwester

Żaryn Jan

Żuczkowski Maciej

Żukowski Marek

Żurek Jacek

Żurek Robert

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Church and the communists in the early days of ‘People’s Poland’ (1944–1956)

Anti-Church structures

The policy of ‘going past each other’

Anti-Church offensive

Campaign against the clergy

The Church and the rigged elections of 1947

The accord of 1950

Restricting the scope of the Church’s activity

‘Non-possumus’ and further repressions

Summary

Chapter 2The Church under Władysław Gomułka (1956–1970)

The thaw of 1956

The primate’s release and regime’s concessions

Primate Wyszyński’s visit to Rome and its consequences

Tightening the screw on the Church

The Second Vatican Council

The Great Novena and Millennium celebrations

Letter from the Polish bishops to the German bishops

The confrontation of 1966

Church administration on Western and Northern Territories

The events of March ’68 and December ’70

Summary

Chapter 3Edward Gierek’s era. Between liberalisation and disintegration1

Anti-Church structures

Repressions, surveillance, disintegration

Fighting the Church’s presence in the public sphere

Secularisation and the struggle for young people’s hearts and minds

Opposing the Church’s political involvement and its contacts with the opposition

Pope Karol Wojtyła, John Paul II, comes to Poland

Summary

Chapter 4 The 1980s. Dialogue and persecution

Anti-Church structures

Repressions, surveillance, disintegration

Church – regime – Solidarity relations

Martial law. The Church is “against extreme measures”

Toward systemic transformation

Summary

Selected bibliography

Published sources

Studies

Index of names