Cardinal & the Commissar

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At No. 18 Via Machiavelli, in the Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, hard by the teeming markets of Rome, a sharp-faced man of 56 with penetrating blue eyes and a quick, pleasant smile settled in last week for a visit in the capital city of his church. He was Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski (pronounced Vishinsky*), Primate of Poland, and, under Pius XII himself, the most remarkable prelate in the Roman Catholic Church today.

The man in Machiavelli Street is a cardinal who cooperates with a Communist leader in a Communist country, a primate who stumped his nation last winter for votes for a straight Communist ticket, a prince of the church who threw away the Vatican rule book in his dealings with the state. He is also the embodiment of the fervent faith of more than 27 million Poles. Wielding that faith as a moral weapon, Wyszynski has forced from Wladyslaw Gomulka's government a degree of religious freedom and recognition for his church undreamed of anywhere else in the Communist world. Today the cardinal and the commissar lean on each other in a breathtakingly precarious balancing act. protecting each other against extremists in both the Catholic and the Communist camp, personally opposed in everything except Polish patriotism and a talent for tough-minded compromise. It is a strange coexistence between the cross and the hammer-and-sickle. But Masses are crowded, public schools are swamped with applications for religious instruction that is once again permitted without interference. Everyone seems to be wearing crosses and holy medals, and even the prosperous Red bourgeoisie of state officials can occasionally be seen bundling their children to church.

Hungary Prevented. Stefan Wyszynski was in Rome last week to get, among other things, the cardinal's red hat that was awarded him in absentia in 1953, for he had been unable to pick it up in person. The chief reason: for three years, until last October, Wyszynski was a prisoner of the Communists. A cardinal's hat is red to symbolize its wearer's willingness to defend the faith "even unto the shedding of his blood.'' But Wyszynski's greatness lies in his prevention of bloodshed.

The cardinal knows that Poland's antiStalinist, National Communist regime represents the utmost limit to which Moscow will let Poland go in the direction of freedom. If Poland's passionately anti-Communist people, hoping for a truly democratic government, were to overthrow or even threaten the Gomulka regime, the result would be as sure as shooting was in Hungary last year: the Russians would move in. To prevent this, Wyszynski has wholeheartedly supported Gomulka, has again and again kept the Poles from rioting against the government. Poles of all political shadings, including Communists, agree that it was Wyszynski's moral force and political skill that kept Poland quiet and Russia's tanks out. For this Wyszynski, once criticized for his willingness to compromise, is now an undisputed hero to his countrymen.

"It shows you an unhappy land sometimes does have a little luck," a Communist politician has said about Wyszynski. Most of the cardinal's flock echoes the cry of a nun in the crowd that saw him off in Warsaw last week: "He is the savior of Poland!"

Departure & Arrival. The hour of Wyszynski's departure for Rome had not been announced, but word spread quickly through the city, and by the time he arrived at the railroad station a large crowd packed the platform, weeping and cheering. Women brought flowers, jars of soup and freshly baked cakes for the journey. "May you live 100 years," they chanted, and when the train finally pulled out people still strained to kiss the cardinal's ring as he leaned from the window.

The crowd that met him at Rome's Terminal Station two days later was scarcely less enthusiastic. But the enthusiasm did not seem to reach the Vatican. The cardinal was met only by minor dignitaries; it was announced that the red hat would be handed over without ceremony and that the Pope would not be able to see his visitor until this week. Vatican spokesmen explained that the cardinal needed rest after his journey and His Holiness was unusually busy--in fact, he had a longstanding appointment with Rome's fire brigade.

Historic Vistas. The Vatican has a long memory. It remembers coexistence and martyrdom, and the infinite shadings between, in times, of Moslem invaders, stiff-necked emperors. Reformation heretics. Enlightenment atheists and revolutionaries without end. So long is the Vatican's memory that an insider can say casually of Wyszynski: "This man is the only free, active, dynamic cardinal in Russian-held territory since the Czars in 1430 ousted Cardinal Isidor, whom Pope Aurelius IV had sent to Moscow."

Accustomed to such historic vistas, many Vaticaners set about putting Cardinal Wyszynski in perspective. There are those who feel strongly that he has gone too far in coming to terms with the Reds. Wyszynski's cool reception was deliberately planned for two reasons: 1) to show that agreements with Communist governments, even when favorable to the church, are nothing to be endorsed eagerly, or for any reason but strict necessity; 2) to protect Wyszynski himself against the propaganda charge that he is a favored tool of the Vatican. Reported one Vatican correspondent: "If the Polish Communists or the Russians ever ask Wyszynski to persuade the Vatican to any particular course of action, Wyszynski might well reply: 'Go tell it to the Roman fire brigade.' " Insiders report, however, that Pius immensely admires Wyszynski, and entirely approves his policy.

Comparisons with Cardinal Mindszenty are inevitable. "The Poles are behaving like Hungarians and the Hungarians like Poles," is a saying that went the rounds last fall. Vast differences in the two nations' situations make direct analogy unfair, but the crack spotlights the contrast between the two cardinals: Hungary's hothearted, unbending Mindszenty, who fought a brave but disastrous battle with the Communists and wound up with the propaganda blunder of taking refuge in the American embassy; and Poland's coolheaded, intellectual Wyszynski, who emerged from three years' imprisonment with the will and the words to calm a people that was spoiling for the barricades.

"We are known for our capacity to make sacrifices and to die a brave death," he told his flock last November in his first public sermon after being released by the Communists. "Poles know how to die magnificently. But, my dear ones, Poles must learn to work magnificently. When one dies one may get glory quickly; but to live in toil, suffering pain and sacrifice for years is greater heroism, and this greater heroism is needed today."

Interrex. When Wyszynski talked, Poland listened--for reasons that are historical, political and personal.

Historically, the Roman Catholic Church is identified with nationalism in Poland as it is in few other countries; Poland became Catholic to avoid being gobbled up. When the pagan Polish ruler Mieszko I was attacked A.D. 963 by Saxon Warlord Count Wichman, Mieszko cannily guessed that this early German Drang nach Osten would disguise itself as a Christian missionary enterprise. To undercut this excuse, he married a Bohemian Catholic princess, took himself and country to the Church of Rome in 966. The office of primate, which in many countries degenerated into a mere courtesy title, remained in Poland (as in Hungary) a potent center of temporal power and political leverage. When the throne was vacant, the primate was "interrex"(interim King), and when in 1772 Poland suffered the first of many partitions at the hands of Russia, Austria and Prussia, the Poles looked to the primate as their temporal and spiritual head. As Primate of Poland, Wyszynski speaks with a prestige and importance fashioned by Poland's past.

The cardinal's words had extra political weight because under Russian persecution, even more than under foreign partition, the church was a symbol of freedom. The story is told of a man in church during the bitter pre-Gomulka days who remained standing during Mass. His neighbors tugged at his sleeve, but he stubbornly refused to kneel. "I'm an atheist," he explained. "Then why do you come to Mass?" they asked. "Because," he said, "I'm against the government."

Up From the Underground. Wyszynski's influence also depends upon his personal history. In a country whose clergy were ofter accused of being allied with the aristocracy, Wyszynski always identified himself with the working man. He was born poor, son of a church organist and schoolteacher in the village of Zuzela near Bialystok. He earned a doctorate in Canon Law and Social Sciences at the University of Lublin, and became known as a "labor priest." He wrote several books on such subjects as unemployment and the rights of labor, was even beginning to act as counsel in labor disputes when, in 1939, the Nazis blitzed Poland.

Young Father Wyszynski joined the resistance, was assigned by his bishop to underground work in Warsaw and youth work in Lublin. In 1946 he became bishop of Lublin. The Nazis had imprisoned some 40% of Poland's priests and half of the prisoners had died or had been killed, but the church quickly recovered strength. By 1948, the Communists decided to move in and take over. They were just beginning to bring pressure on the nation's youth when Bishop Wyszynski was appointed archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw, and hence Primate of Poland to succeed the late Cardinal Hlond. In his first sermon in Warsaw's baroque Church of the Carmelite, Wyszynski declared: "I am neither a politician nor a diplomat. I am your spiritual father, your shepherd, bishop of your souls."

He was soon to learn that when bandits control the grazing lands, good shepherds have to become diplomats.

Modus Moriendi? The heat went on early in 1950. The Communists took over the Catholic charitable organization Caritas. charging that it was a spy center. Bishop Wyszynski and the aged Adam Cardinal Sapieha, archbishop of Cracow, wrote to Communist President Boleslaw Bierut complaining of "abnormal moral pressure . . . organized hunts after priests." who were sometimes arrested and dragged off in their vestments. The Communists replied by confiscating all lands held by religious orders. The following month, while Cardinal Sapieha was in Rome, Primate Wyszynski shocked the Vatican by negotiating an agreement with the Red regime.

The church in Poland pledged itself to support the government in such crucial national matters as the possession of the western territories taken from Germany after World War II, socialization of Poland and expansion of industry, while the state guaranteed continued freedom of worship, religious education and the church press. Cardinal Sapieha, behind whose back Wyszynski had negotiated the armistice, muttered: "This is not a modus vivendi but a modus moriendi." And a way of dying it certainly appeared to be.

Almost immediately, the government began to violate its side of the agreement, firing 500 priests from their posts as religious teachers, demanding that the Polish clergy sign the Stockholm peace declaration (Wyszynski refused at first, later capitulated), rounding up members of religious orders in mass arrests. Wyszynski's stock in the free world was low when in January 1953 he was made cardinal.

Wyszynski's resistance to the Communists stiffened. When a Polish bishop was tried on phony espionage charges, Wyszynski delivered an angry sermon in which he said: "Today they speak of criminals, perhaps tomorrow one will speak of holy criminals." On Sept. 25, 1953, the secret police came to take him away. Cardinal Wyszynski had still one more touch of consideration for the enemy: when one of the arresting officers was bitten by a watchdog, the cardinal insisted on personally bandaging his hand.

Pax & Pals. Two of the Reds' most ambitious attempts at undermining the church were the Patriot Priests and Pax, both of them originated by Ivan Serov, head of the NKVD in Poland during the Stalin period. Serov set up two Trojan horses to take over the church, one loaded with docile ("patriot") priests, one with laymen.

In charge of the lay organization Serov put a bumptious, indestructible gangster named Boleslaw Piasecki. Piasecki had worked as an agent for Mussolini, later for the Gestapo; when he was picked up by the NKVD, he eagerly ratted on his associates, most of whom were promptly liquidated. But nervous Boleslaw, casting about for further life insurance, landed in Pax--officially called the Social Radical Movement of Polish Catholics. The organization had the monopoly on religious publishing, plus the manufacture and sale of all religious articles. The resulting flow of cash provided Piasecki with a luxurious villa, where he kept a Jaguar and plenty of caviar and cognac to drive the blues away. Piasecki did his best to sell the Stalinist brand of anti-Catholic Catholicism. But most of the laity and all of the hierarchy stood firm. Today Pax still controls much of its commercial empire and is still in charge of Caritas, the Catholic welfare organization over which the church seeks direct control. But by and large Pax is utterly discredited.

Even less successful was the organization of the Patriot Priests, headed by Father Jan Czuj, hard-drinking dean of Warsaw University's theological faculty, who started with a group of Catholic chaplains in the Polish army who had been trained and brainwashed in the U.S.S.R. during the war. By best estimates, the group never numbered more than 200 to 300.

Pious Protest. "Operation K" was what Communist Party members called the campaign against the church, and they overlooked no detail to make it more effective. Troops were ordered to see special indoctrination films on Sunday mornings to keep them from attending Mass. In many state restaurants and canteens, meat was served regularly on Friday, even if it was unavailable during the rest of the week. Religious processions were drowned out by jazz-blaring loudspeakers. Religious houses were closed (thousands of nuns took jobs to support their communities), and religious education in the schools was all but ended by harassment.

But all this effort achieved only the opposite effect. Schoolchildren from whose classrooms the crucifixes had been stripped arranged for a different child to bring a crucifix from home each day, or else drew crosses on the walls. Even some party functionaries sought out remote churches to attend Mass and held clandestine church weddings late at night, the bride bringing her veil in a briefcase. Piety became a form of protest. Swedes began noticing that the Polish sailors visiting their ports did not swear the way they used to. Well, said the sailors, they'd rather be good than Communist.

The Conditions. In the hands of the Communists, Cardinal Wyszynski suffered no physical hardship, only isolation. He was never brought to trial as he had feared. He was confined successively to four convents; in the third he was even allowed to see visitors.

Some of his visitors were deputations from the Communists offering his release. If he agreed to give up his post of primate, said one delegation in 1955, he could preach, hear confessions and say Mass. "I prefer to pray for you gentlemen here," replied Cardinal Wyszynski coolly.

When Poland's Stalinist government fell in October 1956 and Wladyslaw Gomulka took power, he lost no time in sending representatives to the cardinal to discuss the conditions of his return. Now Wyszynski was in a position to dictate the terms on which he would accept his freedom, for Gomulka needed Wyszynski's tremendous personal authority to keep Poland's anti-Red fever under control. The cardinal's bargaining power was nothing less than the Soviet army that might roll over Poland if things went out of control.

Wyszynski laid his conditions on the line for Gomulka's emissaries: release of all imprisoned bishops, priests and monks, full implementation of the 1950 church-state agreement, with special emphasis on restoring religious teaching in the schools, plus an agreement to hold general elections. The conditions were promptly accepted, and on last Oct. 29. the cardinal climbed into his black 1947 Ford and drove back to Warsaw. That night the cardinal's car swung into the courtyard of the primate's palace and its headlights picked out the kneeling forms of the cardinal's personal staff waiting to greet him and receive his blessing.

He preached his first sermon at Warsaw's Church of the Holy Cross, where he had been scheduled to speak just before being taken prisoner. "My dear children of God.'" he began. "I am a little late--only a little more than three years. Forgive me; it is the first time that anything like that has happened to me."

Heroes in Truth. So began the unique cooperation of cardinal and Communist that has steered Poland through six shaky months of peace. Tensest time of all was the election campaign, when it became clear that many voters, incensed at having few candidates but Communists to vote for, were planning to stay away from the polls or scratch out the Communist names. Either action would have gravely jeopardized Gomulka's position and brought the threat of Russian intervention. All across Poland parish priests told their flocks what would be required of them, and bishops ostentatiously dropped undeleted ballots into the boxes. Cardinal

Wyszynski, however, voted late at an unexpected polling place in an effort to avoid newspictures that might identify him too closely with a Communist--even if not a Russian Communist--regime.

Within a few days of the election, Wyszynski had another chance to stave off disaster. A group of students in a college near Warsaw decided to stage a march on the Russian embassy, gathering support as they went along. It was 2 a.m. when the cardinal awoke to find a young student standing by his bed. The student explained the plan, and warned: "They are going to march at 4." Wyszynski leapt from his bed and sped to the college, where he roused the students and announced that he would say Mass. The would-be demonstrators thought that he was blessing their cause, and when Mass was over, they listened eagerly as he rose to preach. Quietly the cardinal told them what he has often repeated all over Poland: "You dreamt that this would be your dawn of heroism, and, I tell you, it is indeed your dawn of heroism. You are not heroes on the newsstands for having caused incalculable bloodshed, but heroes in truth because you have, in modest obscurity, renounced a hero's dream, clothed in the attractive gay mantle of glory. You are heroes in truth, and despite all distortions, hypocrisies, illusions and falsehood, truth is still true in this winter of 1957."

In Touch with the World. "Modest obscurity" is a phrase that might also describe Wyszynski's life in his own unpalatial episcopal palace in Warsaw at No. 17 Miodowa, unmarked by any emblem except a faded Polish flag. In the two-story, double-winged building, Wyszynski lives austerely with his hale-looking, greyheaded father (in his '80s), his private chaplain, and his secretary. Visitors from outside Poland are welcome (Americans are plied with questions about the speed of U.S. cars and the wonders of television). Wyszynski sees everyone who wants to see him, except reporters. He keeps in touch with the outside world mostly by means of a single radio and through a steady stream of clergy, nuns, officials and plain citizens in his waiting rooms. There has been no evidence of any direct contact with Gomulka; Education Minister Wladyslaw Bienkowski is usually mentioned as the go-between. Two members of the Polish hierarchy closest to him--they accompanied him to Rome--are Bishop Zygmut Choromanski, Secretary of the Episcopate and the sharpest brain and bargainer in the Polish church, and Auxiliary Bishop Antoni Baraniak of Wyszynski's own see of Gniezno, who was imprisoned just before the cardinal and is considered perhaps his closest friend.

Wherever Wyszynski goes, he makes it a practice to remain until the crowds that inevitably lie in wait for him have dispersed--so as to prevent demonstrations. When he says Mass, he usually emerges from the parish house about an hour after the service. Women kiss his ring, children cling to his robes, people grab at his hands. "Good souls, go home, please," he will say, "or I'll put a tax on you for the rebuilding of the church."

The Look of the Land. Since his release Wyszynski has spent much of his time riding in his old Ford (license H-76-003) along Poland's bumpy roads to check on the conditions of each of his 24 dioceses. What he finds on these trips is a country warming itself in the recovered comforts of free talk and free worship. Communists and liberal intellectuals, in fact, complain bitterly that Gomulka's necessary compromises with the church are turning Poland back to "superstition" --although the more sophisticated clergy that is growing up in Poland under Wyszynski is very different from the old-style simple country priest.

Typically, in the industrial city of Nowo Huta, originally planned as a model Socialist town without a house of worship, the government has now permitted a church to be begun. Everywhere the monotony of dusty village life is once again relieved by bright processions and flower-banked shrines on religious holidays. "It's good for the heart as well as the soul," said a young peasant woman near Lowicz last week, winding a chain of paper roses around a huge roadside cross. A fortnight ago, at the annual renewal of national vows to the Madonna of Czestochowa, 500,000 Poles turned out at the shrine where King John Casimir dedicated his throne and country to Our Lady Queen of Poland just 300 years ago. On an open-air altar high above the plains surrounding the shrine, a mere speck of red to most of the crowd, Cardinal Wyszynski celebrated Mass, opening a nine-year novena that will end in the 1,000th anniversary of Poland's beginning as a Christian land.

Despite the joy most Poles take in their religion, the country has been sliding down toward the doldrums, after the first few heady months following the October coup. The main trouble is economic; as one worker put it last week: "Gomulka kicked out the Russians and brought back the church. That is very good. Now I am waiting to see if we will eat better."

Pending issues. With poverty souring the country's mood, both cardinal and commissar are constantly trying to damp down the tension between them. Pending issues, which will also constitute a major part of Wyszynski's agenda in his talks with the Pope:

P: Religious education. Gomulka's granting as much as he did was a concession he is hard put to defend before his fellow Communists, who see Poland's youth slipping away from them into the Catholic orbit. But Wyszynski is known to be in favor of reintroducing the parochial schools, and there is some laymen's pressure to make religious education compulsory for all--a demand that Gomulka cannot possibly grant and Wyszynski will not make.

P: The question of how much say the state is to have in church appointments.

P: The final dismantling of Pax and the return of the charity organization Caritas to church control.

In Rome, in addition to seeking guidance on these issues, Wyszynski may be working out a plan of action for the nerve-racking eventuality of Gomulka's political fall or replacement by Soviet intervention. He is also doing his best to win over the brassbound conservatives who still think that the stinging intransigence of old Cardinal Sapieha was the only way to deal with Communists.

But in addition. Cardinal Wyszynski hopes to bring back with him some concessions from Rome.

Biggest and least likely prize is Vatican recognition of Poland's right to the former German provinces that were incorporated in Poland after World War II. Every Pole--Communist or Catholic--favors permanent recognition by the Vatican in terms of church administration for three new dioceses in the west, which would be a powerful confirmation of Poland's right to the area; Wyszynski himself enhanced his prestige immeasurably at home when he broke the Vatican rules to confirm the appointments of vicars made by the Communist government while he was imprisoned. Vatican policy was not to make any such appointments until a peace treaty has been signed, and German lobbyists have been working overtime to forestall any Vatican action along these lines.

Wyszynski will also probably ask the Vatican for appointment of a second cardinal--perhaps Bishop Klepacz of Lodz --thus restoring the traditional number of cardinals for Poland and strengthening his Catholic administration.

Even if the cardinal goes home emptyhanded, it is certain that he will go as the top man on the church's firing line, and with the respect and gratitude of the Vatican statesmen, from Pius XII on down. For no country in the Roman Catholic world knows such a flowering of the faith as Poland today, and no country owes so much to a modern prince of the church for merely being alive.

* No kin.

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