Word: czestochowa
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Warsaw taxicab drivers were suddenly ordered to report en masse for vehicle examination. Trains to Czestochowa did not arrive at stations, and prospective passengers were brusquely told, "There are no more tickets left." Buses and cars were stopped for endless roadside identity checks, detours and delays. Yet, despite the obstacles thrown up by Wladyslaw Gomulka's Communist regime, some 300,000 devout Poles last week came by bus, car, train, horseback, buggy, bicycle or foot to the Jasna Gora monastery, the nation's most sacred shrine, which stands on a high hill overlooking Czestochowa...
...climax of ten years of celebrations that the Roman Catholic Church has held to mark Poland's conversion to Christianity in 966. In some ways, it was an oddly anticlimactic one, for the crowds at Czestochowa were not nearly as large as had been hoped-or feared. Church officials had predicted 700,000 pilgrims, while Communist authorities, concerned that the demonstrations might fan the coals of antigovernment resentment, had made elaborate plans to tamp down a turnout that they believed could top a million. Two major football games were scheduled to siphon off Poles who might otherwise make...
...forbidden to come to Czestochowa by Gomulka but nevertheless celebrated his own private millennial Mass in a small chapel among the grottoes of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, before a replica of Czestochowa's renowned Black Madonna...
Adequate = Zero. Gomulka had already vetoed a visit to Czestochowa by Pope Paul VI to celebrate a millennial Mass, but now he seemed intent on keeping Catholics of all ranks-as well as others-away. Visas have been denied to the 150 foreign bishops, archbishops and cardinals invited to Czestochowa. Polish tourist offices in Europe and the U.S. have been blandly advising that visas will not be granted to Western pilgrims, who were originally expected to number 3,000,000. One explanation: "The country will already be too full of tourists." As for TV and newspaper coverage, some 125 Western...
...Poles themselves from taking part. It has announced two top-drawer soccer matches for the big day on May 3, scheduled huge rallies and military parades for Gniezno and Poznan on the very days last week when official church celebrations got under way in those two cities. Trains to Czestochowa will be sporadic at best; many roads will be "under repair." The government has launched a massive propaganda campaign to discredit the church, calling Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, its tough, outspoken leader, a neo-fascist and a friend of Germany. Posters showing Nazi war crimes in Poland are going up everywhere...