162 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
the “Church of Silence,” with Communists instead trying to le-
verage the pope against the primate.104 Even after the death of
John XXIII, Poland’s Office of Confessional Affairs made a point
of framing its criticisms of Catholic activists in contrast to the
“Good Pope.” Perhaps the most extraordinary reprimand that
the Warsaw Catholic Intelligentsia Club leadership ever received
from the Communists came in the early spring of 1963: “we are
devoting too little attention to the Council and to the person of
John XXIII.”105
Zawieyski described his audience with John XXIII on Novem-
ber 20, 1962, in dramatic terms: “One of the greatest days of my
life!” The two spoke French, a language that the pope knew well
from having served as nuncio, among others, to France. When
Zawieyski conveyed the Polish Communist leader’s blessings to
the pontiff, the latter exclaimed, “Ah, Gomułka! I know that he
has done a great deal of good for Poland.”106 Without prompting,
the pontiff declared that Polish jurisdiction over the formerly
German “Recovered Territories” must be formalized in the inter-
est of achieving “peace and understanding between the nations.”
Following the audience, Zawieyski immediately shared his im-
pressions with the primate, with his ZNAK colleagues in Rome,
and also with Polish ambassador to Italy Adam Willmann, under-
scoring for them all “the great pope’s authentic interest in and
good will toward Poland.”107
Gomułka and his Communist colleagues thought less of Paul
VI than they had of John XXIII.108 Even though it was Paul VI
who really inaugurated a comprehensive Ostpolitik predicated on
bilateral negotiations with Communist regimes, the Polish Com-
munist stance toward the Holy See soured in the years following
John XXIII’s death in June 1963.
- Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican, 285–313.
- Zabłocki, Dzienniki, 1:465. 1 06. Zawieyski, Dzienniki, 2:203.
- Zabłocki, Dzienniki, 1:449.
- Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican, 345.