The End and the Beginning
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43. See Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 267.
44. On these points, see Lasota, Donos na Wojtyłę, chapters 1 and 4.
45. See ibid., chapter 2.
46. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 286.
47. Ibid., p. 293.
Chapter Two
1. Adam Boniecki, M.I.C., The Making of the Pope of the Millennium: Kalendarium of the Life of Karol Wojtyła, trans. Irina and Thaddeus Mirecki et alia (Stockbridge, MA: Marian Press, 2000), p. 754 [hereinafter Kalendarium].
2. Ibid., p. 755.
3. For a more detailed portrait of the Great Novena, see Weigel, The Final Revolution, pp. 111–19.
4. See Andrzej Grajewski, “Security Services of the Polish People’s Republic Against the Vatican in 1956–1978,” in NKVD/KGB Activities and Its Cooperation with Other Secret Services in Central and Eastern Europe 1945–1989, ed. Alexandra Grúñová (Bratislava: Nation’s Memory Institute, 2008); hereinafter Grajewski, “Security Services.”
5. See Lasota, Donos na Wojtyłę, chapter 2.
6. Ibid.
7. See ibid., pp. 83–84; trans. by Paula Olearnik.
8. See ibid., chapters 2 and 5.
9. See ibid., chapter 3.
10. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 487.
11. Ibid.
12. Agostino Casaroli, The Martyrdom of Patience: The Holy See and the Communist Countries (1963–1989), trans. Marco Bagnarol, I.M.C. (Toronto: Ave Maria Centre of Peace, 2007), p. 7.
13. Ibid., p. 14.
It is worth noting that the beginnings of the Black Legend of Pius XII’s alleged affinity for fascism and alleged indifference to Jewish suffering during World War II—which originated in Radio Moscow broadcasts in June 1945 and set in place the outline of the anti-Pius case that would intensify in the 1960s with the production of Rolf Hochhuth’s play, The Deputy—antedate this period of high anticommunist Vatican rhetoric. Part of Moscow’s strategy for the Stalinization of its new imperium in east central Europe was the destruction of the Catholic Church’s reputation, which it believed could be advanced by an all-out assault on Pius XII, then at the height of his international authority. (See Sandro Magister, “Pius XII: A Book and an Essay Shed Light on the Black Legend,” available at http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1337848?eng-y; see also Robert A. Graham, S.J., The Vatican and Communism During World War II [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996].)
14. Casaroli, The Martyrdom of Patience, p. 20.
15. Ibid., pp. 36–37.
16. Ibid., p. xxi.
17. Author’s interview with Cardinal Franz König, December 11, 1997.
18. Author’s interview with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, February 14, 1997.
19. Author’s interview with Jan Nowak, May 13, 1998.
Nowak, the longtime director of Radio Free Europe’s Polish service and a close observer of the Catholic contest with communism behind the Iron Curtain, believed that Casaroli’s view of the dynamics of the underground Church in the communist bloc was mistaken, despite the fact that there were occasional liturgical and canonical aberrations in those countries.
20. For a detailed portrait of these Hungarian intelligence efforts, see Stefano Bottoni, “A Special Relationship: Hungarian Intelligence and the Vatican, 1961–1978,” in Alexandra Grúňová, ed., NKVD/KGB Activities, pp. 147–76.
21. See John Koehler, Spies in the Vatican: The Soviet Union’s Cold War Against the Catholic Church (New York: Pegasus Books, 2009), p. 11.
22. Grajewski, “Security Services,” p. 185.
23. For an extensive discussion of Wojtyła’s work at Vatican II, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, chapter 5.
24. Grajewski, “Security Services,” pp. 177–82.
25. Cited in Lasota, Donos na Wojtyłę, chapter 5.
26. Author’s interview with Rev. Msgr. Andrzej Bardecki, July 11, 1996. For more detail on Wojtyła’s appointment as archbishop of Kraków, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, chapter 6.
27. Institute of National Remembrance [hereinafter IPN], document 0648/38.
28. Author’s interview with Andrzej Grajewski, July 15, 2007.
29. See Weigel, Witness to Hope, p. 186.
30. Grajewski, “Security Services,” pp. 185–86.
31. Ibid., p. 186, with reference to IPN document 0445/12, vol. 1, file 3.
32. Boniecki, Kalendarium, pp. 258–60.
33. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, pp. 309–10.
34. Author’s interview with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, February 14, 1997.
35. Andrzej Micewski, Cardinal Wyszyński: A Biography (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), p. 266.
36. Author’s interview with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, February 14, 1997.
37. On Maliński’s identity as DELTA, see Marek Lasota, “Zawartość dokumentacji tajnego współpracownika o ps. ‘Delta,’ ” in Kościół katolicki w czasach komunistycznej dyktatury: Między bohaterstwem a agentur, eds. Ryszarda Terleckiego and Fr. Jana Szczepaniaka (Kraków: Wydział Historii Kościoła Papieskiej Akademii Teologicznej, 2007).
38. Lasota, Donos na Wojtyłę, pp. 239–43.
39. Cardinal Wyszyński’s worries on this front would seem to have been justified, given Casaroli’s standard diplomatic modus operandi. Thus in 1975, Casaroli made clear to Cardinal Alfred Bengsch of Berlin that, during his forthcoming trip to Berlin, he, Casaroli, would be an “official guest of the government” and that any meetings with Casaroli’s fellow churchmen would be of a strictly private character—an admonition duly reported to the Stasi’s religious affairs department by a mole in Bengsch’s office. [See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, p. 139, citing an official Stasi record.]
40. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, pp. 499–500, quoting from official records copied by Mitrokhin.
41. See ibid., pp. 6ff.
42. See Benjamin Weiser, A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the Price He Paid to Save His Country (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), chapter 1. Kukliński’s revulsion at the crushing of the Prague Spring was intensified by the Security Services’ lethal attack on striking Polish workers in Gdańsk in 1970.
43. See Leszek Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
44. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 330.
45. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 500.
46. Wojtyła’s work as archbishop of Kraków is described in detail in Weigel, Witness to Hope, chapter 6.
47. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, pp. 352, 353.
48. Ibid., pp. 368–69.
49. Ibid., p. 372.
50. Straszewski had long been familiar with the internal dynamics and tensions within Polish Catholicism, as one of his interlocutors was Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec, O.P., the distinguished philosopher at the Catholic University of Lublin, who had talked with Straszewski for years.
51. See Lasota, Donos na Wojtyłę, pp. 28–29.
52. See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, pp. 23, 41, 45–51. In the conversation with the South Vietnamese foreign minister (in 1973), Paul VI displayed a remarkable naïveté about Vietnamese communist intentions.
53. See Grajewski, “Security Services,” pp. 187–89.
54. Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Smoleński, April 9, 1997.
55. On Wojtyła and the Corpus Christi procession, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 191–92.
56. Boniecki, Kalendarium, p. 539.
57. Ibid., p. 596.
58. Ibid., p. 654.
59. Ibid., p. 708.
60. Ibid., p. 820.
61. Author’s conversations with Archbishop Damian Zimoń, May 24–25, 2008.
62. Jacek Purchla developed this theme at a conference held at the Kraków Academy of Music on November 5, 2008.
63. Stanisław Dziwisz, A Life with Karol: My Forty-Year Friendship with the Man Who Became Pope, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2008), p. 33.
64. Author’s interview with Henryk Woźniakowski, April 10, 1997.
65. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 509.
66. Author’s interview with Father Andrzej Bardecki, July 11, 1996.
67. Cited in Thomas A. Sancton, “He Dared to Hope,” Time, January 4, 1982.
68. Author’s conversation with Stanisław Rybicki, November 8, 2008.
69. Author’s interview with Dominik Duka, O.P., March 21, 1998.
70. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, pp. 500–501.
71. Author’s interviews with Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, March 12, 2008, and November 20, 2008; no such concern is evident in Casaroli’s memoirs, either.
72. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 503; Bottoni, “A Special Relationship”
73. Lasota, Donos na Wojtyłę, chapter 1.
74. Ibid., chapter 9.
75. Author’s interview with Bohdan Cywiński, November 14, 1998.
76. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, pp. 391–92.
77. See Peter Raina, Arcybiskup Dąbrowski—rozmowy vatykańskie (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Pax, 2001), pp. 190–93.
78. Author’s interview with Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, December 2, 2008.
79. Author’s conversation with members of Środowisko, November 8, 2008.
Chapter Three
1. On immediate KGB reactions to the election of John Paul II, see Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, pp. 510–12.
2. Agostino Casaroli was hardly unaware of the criticism of the Ostpolitik he had engineered; yet he continued to be unaware, it seems, of the fact that Soviet-bloc intelligence had penetrated what he must have imagined to have been sacrosanct Vatican conversations. Thus Hungarian intelligence reported to Budapest that, at a meeting of Holy See diplomatic representatives in Frascati in early 1974, Casaroli challenged the characterization of the Ostpolitik as “ideological compromise” with communism; he then conceded its “disappointing results” while arguing that it should continue because “so long as we dialogue, East-European Christians are not at risk” [cited in Bottoni, “A Special Relationship,” p. 173].
3. Author’s interview with Cardinal William Baum, September 2, 2008.
4. Author’s interview with Cardinal Franz König, December 11, 1997.
5. See Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 490; the report on ADAMANT/Nikodim’s last words is from the author’s interview with historian Bohdan Bociurkiw, August 10, 1996.
6. Ibid., p. 494.
7. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 393. For details of the election of John Paul II and the reaction in Poland and elsewhere, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, chapter 7.
8. Cited in ibid., pp. 508–9.
9. Author’s interview with Jerzy Turowicz, July 19, 1996.
10. Author’s interview with Irina Ilovayskaya Alberti, April 13, 1998.
11. Ibid.
12. Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, p. 61.
13. Author’s interview with Msgr. Andrzej Bardecki, July 11, 1996.
14. An English translation of the entire homily may be found in Origins 8:20 (November 2, 1978). The original Italian text is in Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, 1978. I have modified the NC News Service translation for greater accuracy.
15. Author’s interviews with Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, March 12, 2008, and November 20, 2008.
16. For further details on the first weeks of John Paul II’s pontificate, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, chapter 8.
An early CIA analysis of the probable impact of John Paul II’s election on the politics of central and eastern Europe displayed a surprisingly accurate view of Wojtyła’s likely capacity to reinvigorate Church-based resistance to communism in Ukraine and Lithuania, although overstating the likely effect of John Paul II on what was then the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. [See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, pp. 59–60.]
17. See Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 512.
18. Author’s interview with Andrzej Grajewski, July 14, 2009. See also Andrzej Grajewski, “About the Plague,” Gość Niedzielny, October 18, 2009, for more on the SB’s modus operandi in Rome.
19. The Stasi document in question, logged as 6847/78, was obtained from the German archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski and provided to the author. It was translated from the German by John Rock, S.J., Szymon Malecki, and the author.
20. Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Stanisław Dziwisz, December 16, 1998.
21. See Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 298–99.
22. See Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York: Basic Books, 2005), pp. xxvi; 24; 33ff. (on Cuba as the “bridgehead”); pp. 117ff. (on the Sandinistas in Nicaragua); and pp. 127ff. (on El Salvador).
23. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, p. 75.
24. The Stasi document in question, “Information 241/79,” was obtained from the German archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski and provided to the author. It was translated from the German by John Rock, S.J., Szymon Malecki, and the author.
The “IM” may have been LICHTBLICK (Father Eugen Brammertz, O.S.B., who worked in the Vatican Secretariat of State and on the German edition of L’Osservatore Romano and who had been a Stasi informant for years) or LICHTBLICK’s former student, ANTONIUS (Dr. Alfons Waschbüsch, another Stasi informant who worked for the German Catholic news agency in Rome).
25. Benelli, who was almost elected pope at the second conclave of 1978, seems to have been a bête noire to both the Stasi and the KGB, who regarded him as an anticommunist hard-liner.
26. The Stasi document in question, “Information 228/79,” was obtained from the German archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski and provided to the author. It was translated from the German by John Rock, S.J., Szymon Malecki, and the author.
27. See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, pp. 67–68.
28. For more on the strategy behind John Paul II’s appointment of Casaroli and Silvestrini, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 299–300.
29. The Stasi document in question, “Information 316/79,” was obtained from the German archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski and provided to the author. It was translated from the German by John Rock, S.J., Szymon Malecki, and the author.
30. Author’s interview with Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, December 2, 2008.
31. See Weigel, Witness to Hope, p. 301, for a fuller account of this bizarre episode.
32. See Lasota, Donos na Wojtyłę, chapters 9 and 10.
33. See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, p. 213.
34. Andrzej Grajewski, “Operacja papiez,” W prost, No. 43/2008 (1348).
Brammertz was a prolific mole. The extant summaries of his voluminous reports run to over 200 pages; each was classified “A,” for “reliable,” and variously graded as being of “medium value” or “very valuable” in utility. It seems virtually certain that all of the LICHTBLICK materials were shared with the KGB. Brammertz’s work included a 1984 report on Opus Dei as an instrument of John Paul II’s anticommunist activism and was likely intended as support for an anti–Opus Dei disinformation campaign, given its discussion of Opus Dei’s “economic criminality,” which allegedly included arms running and narcotics trafficking—standard smears in Stasiland. [See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, pp. 157–59.]
35. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, p. 118.
36. For a detailed analysis of John Paul II’s first papal pilgrimage to Poland, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 300–323.
37. One particularly busy Stasi spy during the Nine Days, STEPHAN, acidly reported to his East Berlin masters that Polish president Jablonski’s farewell to John Paul II had been “a Bruderschaftskuss [brotherhood kiss]” [cited in Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, p. 84].
38. Polish composer Henryk Gorecki protested Gierek’s refusal to allow the Pope into the Silesian city of Katowice, and lost his job at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice as
a result.
39. Adam Michnik, “A Lesson in Dignity,” in Michnik, Letters from Prison and Other Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 160.
40. Author’s interview with Jan Nowak, May 13, 1998.
41. Casaroli, The Martyrdom of Patience, p. 340.
42. Quoted in “Information 228/79” (cf. note 26).
43. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 399.
44. Ibid., pp. 401–2.
45. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 513.
46. For an analysis of John Paul II’s 1979 UN address, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 327–28, 346–50.
47. A photocopy of the decree and supporting documents, in the original Russian, was given to the author by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski, who had obtained the materials from Dr. Andrzej Paczkowski. The translations are by Ashley Morrow.
48. Author’s interviews with Andrzej Grajewski, May 8, 2008, and November 7, 2008.
49. Sprawozdanie z rozmów przeprowadzonych z Papiezem Janem Pawłem II, z kardynałem Agostino Casaroli, prałatem Lewandowskim I innymi osobami w Watykanie w dniach 18-21. III. 1980 r. [Report on Conversations Carried out with Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, Msgr. Lewandowski, and Others in the Vatican between 18 and 21 March 1980], from the Archives of the Polish Foreign Ministry, AMSZ D.IV Wat-0-22; original Polish document translated by Paula Olearnik.
50. Antoni Dudek, “The Carnival,” in The Road to Independence: Solidarność 1980–2005, trans. Robert Strybel (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza Volumen/Komisja Krajowa NSZZ ‘Solidarnosc,’ 2005), p. 15 [hereinafter: Dudek, “The Carnival”].
51. John Paul II, Address to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization, October 5, 1995, 2.
52. Cited in Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (Sevenoaks, Kent: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985), p. 331.
53. Details here are taken from Dudek, “The Carnival,” pp. 17–27.
54. On the strike bulletin name and logo, see Roman Laba, The Roots of Solidarity: A Political Sociology of Poland’s Working-Class Democratization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 132–33.
55. Dudek, “The Carnival,” p. 29; for Wojtyła on “solidarity,” see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 175–76.