182 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
sided, following preparatory sessions in Rome.175 One of the con-
gress’s principal tasks was to set the agenda for the Third World
Congress of the Laity, planned for 1967, the first to be held since
the death of Pius XII. Joining laity from all over the world, Poles
traversed the Iron Curtain to assume the role that they believed
it their obligation to play alongside their bishops. In this, “open
Catholicism” was both their guide and the gateway to a new kind
of transnational engagement.
Poland was also the only Iron Curtain country to be granted a
lay auditor at the Second Vatican Council. Introduced by Paul VI
for the Second Session, the status of auditor allowed prominent
Catholic philosophers, historians, and social activists to observe
the plenary sessions and to participate fully in conciliar commis-
sion work as the only nonclerical voices at Vatican II. In most cas-
es, auditors were designated at the recommendation of the head
bishop of a given country, although officially they participated in
the Council ad personam at the Holy Father’s invitation. The Sec-
ond Session featured twelve lay auditors (all men), while the Third
Session included also women (seventeen out of a total of forty au-
ditors).176
Poland had one auditor, a professor from the Catholic Uni-
versity of Lublin named Stefan Swieżawski. This historian was
unique among his colleagues in the ZNAK movement, as his for-
mal training in Catholic thought both far exceeded and substan-
tially antedated that of his fellow activists. One of Poland’s most
eminent scholars of Catholicism, Swieżawski had an interna-
tional reputation that preceded even World War II. As a graduate
student, he had studied in France in 1929–30 under the Thomist
- Woźniakowski’s impressions from both meetings—as well as the Third
Session—are recorded in Jacek Woźniakowski, Laik w Rzymie i w Bombaju (Kraków:
Znak, 1965). - On Paul VI’s unprecedented decision to bring in lay auditors, see Groot-
aers, “The Drama Continues between the Acts: The ‘Second Preparation,’ ” in History
of Vatican II, 2:350–441.