Word: gomulka
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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...
...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...
...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...
...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...