Managing Religion in Communist-Era Poland Catholic Priests Versus the Secret Police

SzporerManaging Religion in Communist-Era Poland

REVIEW ESSAY Managing Religion in Communist-Era Poland Catholic Priests versus the Secret Police

✣ Michael Szporer

Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, Ksièía wobec Bezpieki [Priests against the Secret Police]. Kraków: Znak, 2007. 433 pp.

Solidarity was a moral revolution with strong religious overtones, sparked in large measure by the election of the archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyla, as pope on 16 October 1978 and his historic pilgrimage to Poland on 2 June 1979. These momentous events, which Soviet leaders worried would cause unrest in Poland, were seen by many Poles as a validation of the historical narrative of their oppressed land as the “Christ of Nations” resisting “atheistic Communism.” John Paul II evoked this narrative during his second pilgrimage to Poland during the dark days of martial law, when he memorialized Car- dinal Stefan Wyszyñski, who died on 28 May 1981. The pope told the crowd at St. John’s Cathedral in Warsaw that he stood beneath the cross “with all my compatriots, especially those who are acutely tasting the bitterness of disap- pointment, humiliation, suffering, of being deprived of their freedom, of being wronged, of having their dignity trampled upon.” Solidarity acted in close alliance with the Roman Catholic Church, and the union’s struggle for human dignity and freedom became a question of national redemption, often using religious symbols and rituals such as “the Mass for the Nation,” as acts of deªance and moral cleansing. Although one can ar- gue whether Pope John Paul II was personally the fulcrum of revolt, the rise of Solidarity and the demise of Polish Communism are difªcult to imagine without him. The Roman Catholic Church played a critical role in offsetting the Communist regime, beginning with Primate Stefan Cardinal Wyszyñski. Among the many priests who later helped Poland to freedom were the philos- opher cleric Józef Tischner, who perhaps best exempliªed the values of the

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democratic opposition; the Solidarity martyr Father Jerzy Popieluszko; and the Free Trade Union (WZZ) priest from Gdynia, Father Hilary Jastak. The Polish security forces made vigorous efforts to penetrate the Polish Catholic Church, eventually enlisting as informants some 15 percent of the 25,000 priests in Poland, but this was a much lower rate of penetration than in other professions, notably journalists and professors. The Polish church for the most part retained its autonomy, faring better than elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc, and helped to shape the opposition mentality that eroded and eventually brought down the system.1 Recent revelations of extensive collaboration by priests, notably in Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski’s acclaimed book, provide a valuable correction to the historical record but do not greatly detract from the image of the Church overall as having resisted Communism. The Church, among other things, served as a refuge for many in the darkest moments of the Communist era and helped to force change by throwing its support behind Solidarity. A Pole of Armenian descent, Father Isakowicz- Zaleski ministered to the striking workers at the Lenin Steel Works in Nowa Huta in 1988. He began his research after familiarizing himself with a 500- page security police ªle on him, which included a video of thugs from the Se- curity Service (SB) in 1985 as they severely beat him and used cigarettes to burn a V for Solidarity victory on his chest. Throughout the Communist era, the Polish secret police fought religion in Poland. During the Stalin era, watchful vigilance against internal political threats was coupled with violent repression. The internal security apparatus in Poland applied extralegal “administrative measures” (to use the phrase coined by Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founding director of the Soviet state security or- gans) to battle the “enemy within,” including the Catholic Church. The struggle against the Polish church began as early as 12 September 1945 with the abrogation of the Vatican concordat and increased over time with the im- position of severe restrictions on religious institutions through nationalization of church property, the forcible seizure of buildings, limits on church publica- tions, and the closure of publishing houses and print shops.2 In 1952, seminaries and church dormitories were closed, and in subse-

1. In general, rates for collaboration in Poland, judging from the list of around 240,000 names com- piled by Poland’s Instytut Pamiëci Narodowej (Institute of National Remembrance, IPN)—a list leaked by the Polish journalist Branislaw Wildstein in 2005—were lower than in other Soviet-bloc countries. In East Germany, for example, an estimated one in six citizens collaborated with the State Security, and similar rates of collaboration existed in much of the USSR, including the Russian Ortho- dox Church, which was systematically penetrated by the State Security Committee (KGB). The Lithu- anian Catholic Church, which suffered prolonged repression, is still divided between those who resisted and those who collaborated and gained leading positions in the hierarchy. The resignation of bishop Stanislaw Wielgus in Poland prompted Lithuanian Cardinal Audrys Backis to give assurance that reorganization of the church in Lithuania had made KGB connections unlikely. 2. The historian Marek Lasota of the IPN argues that the campaign actually began a bit earlier, in

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quent years nuns were routinely removed from hospitals, social services, schools, and kindergartens. The forced transfer of 7 million ethnic Germans from Pomerania and Silesia caused irreparable damage to many church collec- tions, archives, and libraries. More than 1,000 Polish priests and nuns were arrested on trumped-up charges, and several dozen were murdered. During Iosif Stalin’s ªnal years in Moscow, the Polish Communists attempted to co- opt the Church, with some initial success, and prepared to destroy it. These efforts, however, ultimately proved futile. The “clerical commission” of the state-sponsored Veterans’ Association included only about a thousand of the so-called patriot priests, some concentration camp victims, and a few combat veterans.3 The marginal inºuence of quasi-religious associations such as PAX, despite the support they received from the regime, reºected the con- tinuing power of the Church. Although the relationship between the Church and the Communist regime improved after Stalin’s death—the political changes in 1956 saw the re- lease of Cardinal Wyszyñski—the breathing spell was short-lived. Having failed to destroy the Church, the Polish Communist regime set out to contain it. Although the methods used by the security forces became more reªned, pressure on the Church persisted until 1989 when the Communist regime yielded power to Solidarity. The SB’s tactics of obtaining information and sowing disinformation about the Church were elaborate, involving large networks of agents. Methods of recruiting informants and agents were reªned, often proceeding gradually over many years, moving in steps from an informed source to a responsible citizen to a collaborator and even an intelligence agent, as in the case of Father Stanislaw Szlachta (codenamed TW Pátnik by the SB), who served as the “secure source” during John Paul II’s ªrst visit. Isakowicz-Zaleski’s account is sobering but also makes clear that the Church was not in a position of complete subservience. Most clerics refused

December 1944, when Colonel Julia Brystiger headed the department for religious affairs at the Min- istry of Public Security. 3. In 1952, 485 “patriot priests” were members of the state-sponsored Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy (ZBOWID), which consisted almost entirely of veterans from the army formed in the USSR. An additional 300 belonged to PAX (known until 1950 as the Movement of Progressive Cath- olics), an organization devoted to reconciling the church with the Communist party. According to Hanna Diskin, the Movement of Progressive Catholics was formed on 1 November 1945. Norman Davies claims it was set up in 1947 and refers to it as an anti-Catholic, pseudoreligious organization. Any priest who belonged to a Communist organization faced suspension from duties by order of Car- dinal Wyszyñski and a Vatican decree from 1950 forbidding participation in political organizations without permission from the bishop. See Tomasz Potkaj, “W sumieniu bylem spokojny,” Tygodnik Powszechny (Kraków), 8 September 2002, p. 3; Hanna Diskin, The Seeds of Triumph: Church and State in Gomulka’s Poland (New York: Central European University Press, 2001); and Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland in Two Volumes, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), Vol. 2, p. 579.

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to cooperate, and many of those who did collaborate were eventually able to break ties. The book is a carefully weighed, insightful overview of attempts by the security services to penetrate and manage the Church, which was highly vulnerable as it tried to minister to the faithful in a Communist state. The regime expended considerable resources on propaganda and constantly monitored Church activities, personal correspondence, and private lives through wiretaps, surveillance, and searches. The SB attempted to curb Church inºu- ence through threats, blackmail, and, in cases involving activist priests, arrests, interrogations, and acts of violence, including assault and murder. Isakowicz- Zaleski provides numerous examples of the SB’s pervasive monitoring, such as the bugging of the Kraków archdiocese with listening devices during renova- tion by a construction ªrm that was a police front. The publication of this book would have been difªcult during Pope John Paul II’s lifetime given his role during the Solidarity era, but the book should not have aroused as much controversy as it did. Although attempts to ban publication of it failed, the initial resistance was indicative of broader prob- lems in Poland in coming to terms with the Communist past. Isakowicz- Zaleski observes that Bishop Stanislaw Wielgus’s resignation with an apology on 7 January 2006, the day of his installation as Archbishop of Warsaw, dem- onstrates that keeping secrets about past collaboration can cause greater embarrassment. The emotional reactions to Isakowicz-Zaleski’s book— notably from Poland’s controversial primate Józef Cardinal Glemp, who called Isakowicz-Zaleski a “super-agent” (nadubek), and from Poland’s liberal press in challenging the long-term wisdom of lustration—were tendentious and overblown. The book offers a realistic account, rather favorable to the Church, and can be thought of as a companion to Marek Lasota’s book about the SB’s surveillance of Karol Wojtyla (who became Pope John Paul II).4 The book does not dwell on spectacular revelations such as “Operation Triang- olo,” the SB’s program of hostile actions against the pope. Nor does the book say much about the SB ofªcer Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, who was impli- cated in the murder of Father Popieluszko. One has to agree with Isakowicz- Zaleski, who described the reaction to his book as “wild anti-lustration,” turn- ing the media catch phrase on its head. The notion that Communist secret police records were intentionally and systematically falsiªed has largely proven a myth. To be sure, doctoring of records did occur in some cases, and agent reports in the ªles are full of inaccu- racies stemming from ideological distortions, misinterpretations, confusion, misunderstandings, and human error. Much depended on the reporting

4. Marek Lasota, Donos na Wojtylè: Karol Wojtyla w teczkach bezpieki [Informing on Wojtyla: Karol Wojtyla in Communist Secret Police Records] (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2006).

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agent’s whims and character. Moreover, the reports in the ªles are context- sensitive, often shaped by the situation of contact, not just the times. Some priests reacted less resolutely than they ordinarily would have when con- fronted with aggressive behavior or street-savvy interrogators looking for a moment of weakness.5 On the other hand, the security apparatus veriªed its information, applying internal controls through follow-up reports, analysis, and cross-ªling of information. As a rule, the secret police did not create records for the purpose of self-delusion. The operational documents are surpris- ingly thorough, providing meticulous detail about the lives and habits of the targeted individuals—details that the reporting agent never anticipated would be made public. The book is a slice of a much larger picture of invigilation of the Church, restricting itself to southern Poland, mainly the Archdiocese of Kraków. Like Marek Lasota in his book on the secret police reports’ depictions of the activities of the future pope, Isakowicz-Zaleski is careful with the documents. Al- though he identiªes collaborator priests, he gives them a chance to respond to their police ªles. In his overview he acknowledges that the incomplete ªles skew the picture by making much of the small vanities of informers. He con- cedes that the material in some cases is difªcult to interpret, incomplete, or missing because of the destruction of “operational ªles” kept by the SB on every priest, parish, and bishop. The clergy were routinely monitored from the time they took their vows until their death, but many ªles were destroyed in 1989, shortly after the June election that brought the Solidarity government to power. Isakowicz-Zaleski names 39 collaborators, four bishops among them, but the book also contains numerous accounts of priests who were targeted but resisted, demonstrating that not everyone could be bought, even in circum- stances of a compromising infraction. The book includes SB materials about the 1977 murder of student activist Stanislaw Pyjas and his family, as well as about Father Tischner and other associates of Karol Wojtyla, including his successor as Archbishop of Kraków, Franciszek Cardinal Macharski. The activities of some “patriot priests,” like army chaplain Colonel Henryk Weryñski, have been well known since 1954 when Colonel Józef Swiatlo, who defected to the West in December 1953, reported them on Radio Free Europe. Some noteworthy revelations in the book are references to Arch- bishop Juliusz Paetz, who later relinquished his post amid a homosexual scan- dal involving seminarians and priests; Father Janusz Bielañski, rector of the

5. See, for example, Wielgus’s account of his contacts with the SB in 1978, published in Dziennik on 5 January 2007: “I had to deal with a brutal intelligence ofªcer who, by hollering at me and threaten- ing that he would destroy me, forced me to sign a declaration of collaboration with the intelligence services. It was my moment of weakness. I have always regretted that I did not cancel my trip.”

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historic Wawel Cathedral, the burial place of Polish monarchs; Father Mieczyslaw Maliñski, a lifelong friend of Pope John Paul II; and Father Mieczyslaw Satora, who was the closest collaborator planted in the newly elected pope’s entourage during the 1979 visit. Although lifestyle and material rewards were nearly always exploited, the most common means of recruiting collaborators among priests and other in- tellectuals was the promise of a passport for travel abroad. Sometimes the ap- parent ability “to cut though red tape” to obtain a passport for parishioners was used as a means to strengthen the collaborator priest’s position in the community. Whenever possible, the security apparatus played on the profes- sional ambitions of individual priests, sometimes even facilitating upward mobility in the church hierarchy. In this regard, what is most surprising is not the degree of penetration but the high quality of the reporting, which enabled the security services to stay well informed. Although some priests risked their careers when they refused to collaborate, Isakowicz-Zaleski points out that outright refusal often ended the relationships with few adverse consequences. The secret police tried to persuade priests by appealing to their sense of civic duty and feelings of patriotism, sometimes winning over individuals by making collaboration easy or beneªcial. Has the vetting of priests and others been misdirected? The real culprits were not the collaborators but the party bosses and their extralegal army, like the retired state security ofªcer Captain Kazimierz Aleksanderek, a successful Kraków businessman, who for thirty years oversaw operations against the Church as regional head of Department IV. He in fact may have been the one who orchestrated the brutal beating of Isakowicz-Zaleski. Moral cleansing is a serious problem in every former Communist country where one-time security operatives wield considerable inºuence and are closely connected to business and political elites, sometimes using organized crime for their dirty work. Be- cause of missing or unopened records, the old networks maintain formal or informal dominance. For all the criticism and irregularities associated with vetting, public opinion surveys in Poland have consistently revealed a sizable majority in favor of lustration. If the Church aspires to be some kind of moral guide, it has to lead by example and reºect on its past. Isakowicz-Zaleski observes: “If as priests we are true to our calling by speaking to the faithful from the pulpit and teaching them certain moral principles, then we are obliged to clean up our own act.” The moral authority of a church, a government, or any other institution depends on its honesty in facing up to a traumatic past.

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