164 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
their primate’s permission before taking these meetings, yet the
meetings were set up not through Wyszyński, but through back-
channels. The most important intermediary proved to be Konrad
Sieniewicz, a leader of Poland’s exiled Christian Democratic par-
ty, who in the 1950s had become a major player in transnational
Christian Democracy.113
Noting Wyszyński’s “historic” opportunity to play intermedi-
ary between the Catholic Church and a Communist regime, Za-
wieyski remained skeptical of the primate’s willpower: “I feel in
my bones that the cardinal will somehow worm his way out of this
role.”114 Time and again, after hearing Wyszyński deliver sermons
and lectures in Rome, Zawieyski noted with regret the primate’s
incessant emphasis on the value of “martyrdom”: “The word ‘mar-
tyrdom’ was repeated hundreds of times. Young Italian girls were
listening to these words, students of the Ursuline nuns in Rome.
What could they possibly have thought of all of this?”115
The other branches of the ZNAK movement—particularly
the writers and editors of the Kraków-based Tygodnik Powszechny
and Znak—evinced a similar skepticism toward Wyszyński. Ty-
godnik Powszechny editor-in-chief Jerzy Turowicz covered the en-
tire First and Second sessions of the Council, with his reporting
appearing in a weekly front-page feature entitled, “Jerzy Turow-
icz Is Calling from Rome.” In an October 1963 conversation with
Jan Grootaers, Turowicz minced no words as he expressed his
frustration with the Polish Council fathers’ refusal to compro-
mise with the regime. Turowicz declared,
Cardinal Wyszyński is too tough on the regime, it seems to me. He
seems to believe that the fall of communism is very near. Yet we
may still be living under this regime for a long time. Some form of
coexistence (not too peaceful) is inevitable. It is necessary to be re-- Konrad Sieniewicz, W Polsce po trzydziestu latach (London: Odnowa, 1978).
- Zawieyski, Dzienniki, 2:199.
- Ibid., 2:208.