180 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
Council was Jerzy Turowicz, who had access to the largest Polish-
language readership of any journalist, aside from Communist
correspondent Ignacy Krasicki. As Brian Porter-Szűcs has noted,
Tygodnik Powszechny had a reputation of “constantly push[ing] at
the edges of Polish Catholicism (and, for that matter, Polish com-
munism), testing how far one could go without crossing some line
that would solicit charges of heterodoxy.”169
In the course of the Council, even as the state deployed ever
more severe repressive measures against Tygodnik Powszechny, its
mass readership continued to grow. The weekly could boast of the
most direct link of any Polish Catholic voice to what the Council
fathers were doing. As Zabłocki noted in October 1964, Tygodnik
Powszechny was, given its weekly print run of 50,000, “for the Pol-
ish reader effectively the principal source of information about
the Council.”170 Even when the print run was halved that year as
punishment for editor-in-chief Jerzy Turowicz’s decision to sign
the so-called Letter of 34171—an open letter of Poland’s journal-
istic and literary elite to the prime minister protesting censorship
of the written word—Tygodnik Powszechny was able to continue
its weekly coverage.
During each of the four sessions, Tygodnik Powszechny was
the main source of Polish-language translations of texts by Holy
fathers and Council fathers.172 During the First and Second ses-
sions, Turowicz’s extensive reporting by telephone from Rome
graced the front page of each issue. In 1964, when Turowicz was
denied a passport following the Letter of 34, Jacek Woźniakowski
took over for him with weekly reports from Rome.
The commentaries provided by Turowicz and Woźniakowski
painted a portrait of daily life in conciliar Rome, providing a mise-
- Porter-Szűcs, Faith and Fatherland, 40.
- Zabłocki, Dzienniki, 1:557.
- Jerzy Eisler, List 34 (Warsaw: PWN, 1993).
- For example, “Jan XXIII z okazji zamknięcia Soboru,” Tygodnik Powszechny,
December 23, 1962.