VATICAN II AND POLAND 157sioned personally by Poland’s internal affairs minister on October
23, 1963, the document was prepared in just under three weeks.
Calling the cult “superficial and bigoted,” the memo went so far as
to request of Pope Paul VI the designation of a special envoy to
Poland to study the cult, “to whom Poles might be able to express,
without fearing for themselves, their observations and fears, espe-
cially those born of the unhealthy and exaggerated Marian cult.”93
This document circulated far and wide—in public and in pri-
vate. It was delivered to 170 specifically targeted recipients at the
Council, including the twenty-three Polish bishops then in Rome,
as well as important theologians and émigré activists in Paris,
London, Berlin, and Munich. On November 30, 1963, the day when
the memorandum first surfaced in public, “unidentified persons”
were even distributing copies on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica.94
As Wyszyński’s biographer reports, “The memorandum sowed
confusion and disorientation among Council participants. Some of
them, including official representatives of bishops’ conferences—
from France, Switzerland, and Spain—came to the Polish section
of the conciliar press office requesting copies of the memoran-
dum.”95 In response, Polish bishops in Rome for the Second Ses-
sion issued a press release on the memo the very next day: “Its
true purpose is a direct personal attack on Cardinal Wyszyński and
an indirect attack on the Polish bishops as a whole, in keeping with
the tactics of the Communists who seek to make the hierarchy
look as bad as possible in the eyes of the world, seeking thereby to
justify their hatred toward it.”96
Before this campaign, the Polish delegation had positioned
itself as the clarion voice advocating Mary’s elevation to the sta-
czyli o tym jak bezpieka ‘uczestniczyła’ w Soborze Watykańskim II,” Arcana, nos. 55–56
(2004): 118–35.
- Quoted at Czaczkowska, Kardynał Wyszyński, 1st ed., 442.
- Cenckiewicz, “Sprawa anty-maryjnego memoriału,” 118.
- Czaczkowska, Kardynał Wyszyński, 1st ed., 443.
- Quoted in Czaczkowska, Kardynał Wyszyński, 2nd ed., 496.