Cardinal Wyszynski - Initiator and Critic of Vatican’s "Eastern Policy", 1945-1978

Abstract

The article deals with Vatican’s “Eastern Policy’’ of the Polish Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (1901-1981). The main source is the 20-volume publication of the Polish historian P. Raina “Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. Time of Service” containing extensive fragments from Wyszynski’s diaries (“Pro memoria’’). We find there the Cardinal’s notes on his meetings and discussions with Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, the leaders of the Roman Curia, Vatican diplomats, and leaders of the Polish Episcopate. All these give us a chance to see Vatican’s “Eastern Policy”from inside, to understand its motives and its intrinsic logic, as well as the reasons for its criticism by Cardinal Wyszynski. For Pope Paul VI communism was an expanding global political system, and the Holy See’s diplomacy was to find compromises with it, while for Cardinal Wyszynski and the Polish bishops, communism was an archaic and obsolete doctrine, and they saw their main duty to resist it.