Word: polisher
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...further concessions, the papacy today has no more divisions than it had when Stalin first sneered at its lack of them. Where Poland is concerned, however, John Paul II does have considerable secular as well as spiritual clout. It derives not merely from the strength and solidarity of Polish Catholics or from his own toughness and experience in struggling with Communists. To a considerable degree, it also results from the political and economic morass in which Poland finds itself...
...bring Poland out of economic stagnation. An international recession and a string of bad harvests led instead to an economic slump; and Gierek, like his predecessor, attempted to end artificial price controls in 1976. Workers took to the streets, and the regime backed down. With no solution in sight, Polish consumers now suffer from endemic shortages of meat. Necessary consumer goods like pins and shoe polish are sporadically unavailable. Meanwhile, Poland has managed to roll up an international debt of $15 billion...
...topics like the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland that state classrooms never mention. There are some two dozen illegal samizdat periodicals and dissident organizations for intellectuals, workers and peasants. In its present need to ensure a measure of political order, the Gierek government devoutly desires good relations with the Polish church and the Vatican. That need is a source of the Pope's bargaining power...
Even Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko has been concerned. He made an early visit to the Vatican after John Paul was elected to size up the new Polish Pope. John Paul may prove a hard bargainer, much more likely than Paul VI to demand quid pro quo for Vatican good will and to hold the Communist world to its word thereafter. Gromyko was recently quoted in the Italian press as fearing that the Pope's visit would have "the same effect on the masses as the Ayatullah Khomeini had in Iran...
...censored John Paul's first message to his former diocese in Cracow because he praised St. Stanislaw, an 11th century bishop of that city, by describing him as a martyr who "did not hesitate to confront the ruler when defense of the moral order called for it." The Polish government also balked at the Pope's expressed interest in returning home during last month's 900th anniversary celebration of the martyrdom...