VATICAN II AND POLAND 167Powszechny, around the Znak and Więź monthlies, and in the
ZNAK Parliamentary Circle in the Sejm of the People’s Republic
of Poland.”123 Although Stomma claimed to speak for the entire
movement, Zawieyski, for example, was not even consulted.
Wyszyński already felt that lay activists had betrayed him a
decade earlier, when PAX failed to defend him at the time of his
arrest in 1953. PAX had never been close to the primate; ZNAK,
however, aspired to close cooperation with the episcopate. For
the primate, then, Stomma’s memo was even more hurtful, for
it came from activists who “call me ‘Father,’ and who therefore
should have called upon me as their ‘Father.’ ”124 It was not even
the substance of the memorandum—a vague declaration of in-
tent to help normalize relations between Poland and the Vati-
can—that irked Wyszyński, but rather the underhanded manner
in which it had been presented to the Holy See. This was all the
more painful coming, as it did, immediately on the heels of the
anti-Marian memorandum.
Much had therefore changed in the two years separating Za-
wieyski’s papal audiences. In this poisoned environment, it was
difficult for any autonomous initiatives to bear fruit. When Za-
wieyski arrived in Rome in the fall of 1964 for his private audi-
ence with Paul VI, he had to wait over a month in utter uncer-
tainty. Preoccupied with the Affaire PAX, Wyszyński seemed also
to be punishing his old friend, suggesting at one point that Za-
wieyski see the pope not as a member of the Polish State Council,
but instead as a private citizen, an artist. To this, Zawieyski re-
sponded, “I didn’t come here to talk to the pope about theater.”125
At the same time, the Communist journalist Ignacy Krasicki
—permanent Roman correspondent for Polish Radio and for the
- “W setną rocznicę urodzin prymasa Stefana Wyszyńskiego (3 sierpnia
1901–2001): Wyszyński: strażnik tradycji czy wizjoner?” Tygodnik Powszechny, Au-
gust 5, 2001; Friszke, Koło posłów “Znak” w Sejmie PRL, 53–57. - Quoted in Zabłocki, Dzienniki, 1:502.
- Zawieyski, Dzienniki, 2:376.