Word: wyszynski
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...impoverished nobleman who worked as a village schoolteacher and parish organist, Wyszynski was born in 1901 in the northeastern village of Zuzela and was ordained in 1924. He later wrote extensively on labor and rural problems and earned the affectionate nickname of the "worker priest." Active in the anti-Nazi resistance as an underground army chaplain in World War II, he was consecrated as the Bishop of Lublin in 1946. Two and a half years later, Pope Pius XII named him Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw, an appointment that also made Wyszynski, at 47, the Primate of Poland-leader...
...skills as a political infighter were put to the test in 1948 by the new Communist government's sweeping antireligious campaign, which was marked by the confiscation of church property and arrests of clergymen. Seeking to protect the church from such persecution, Wyszynski signed a coexistence agreement with the government in 1950 that was attacked by his critics. It restored some religious freedoms-on paper-but required the church to discipline priests for alleged antigovernment acts...
Within a year the government reneged on the deal, and when Wyszynski refused to denounce a bishop accused of political offenses, he was himself arrested in September 1953. In a characteristic gesture, he is said to have delayed the proceedings while he bandaged the hand of a secret police officer who had been bitten by the Primate's watchdog...
...Wyszynski remained under house arrest for the next three years. The ordeal ended in 1956, when Wladyslaw Gomulka came to power after a national upheaval and released the Primate in a bid for popular support. Wyszynski responded with a public call for "national unity and calm" that helped restore order and averted a threatened Soviet invasion. There followed a period of precarious tactical cooperation between the Cardinal and the Communist leader. Then, as always, Wyszynski's goal was to push for more freedom without precipitating retaliation by the Communists that would cancel his gains...
Church-state relations became more stable after 1970 under Gomulka's successor, Edward Gierek, although Wyszynski continued to lash out against specific abuses. Following the bloody repression of the 1976 food price riots, for example, he denounced the government's persecution of the demonstrators...