The Darkening Mood

In the small village of Nowy Dvor, some 20 miles from Warsaw, shirt-sleeved farmers chatted in the main square before the church, glancing toward the grey militia cars parked near by. In the dusty churchyard, women knelt to pray while children in white Communion dresses skipped about. Inside the small, battered church, Bishop Jerzy Modzelewski told an overflowing congregation that the replica of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, scheduled to arrive that day in Nowy Dvor as part of a summer-long processional to celebrate the millennium of Poland's conversion to Christianity would not come. "The authorities intercepted it," he explained. "The van carrying the madonna was taken to St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw. We are very sorry."

The Poles who listened were more than merely sorry. Throughout Poland, the continuing attempts of Wladyslaw Gomulka's Communist regime to sidetrack the millennial festivities have created a darkening mood of resentment that is spreading from the deeply religious to those who normally take a more impartial stance. The government has staged rival celebrations, temporarily detained bishops and Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski himself, dragged individual citizens off to police stations on grounds that they had been "planning to take a trip to Czestochowa," or "standing by" during anti-regime demonstrations. Tens of thousands of peasants have been left by the roadside, in their Sunday clothes and with bouquets in their hands, patiently awaiting the passage of the replica of the Black Madonna, whose journey was interrupted by the government. Partly in protest, churches are filling with students who stop by between classes, before lunch, or in the evening for benediction.

"It is Gomulka," mutters one Communist official angrily. "It is the old man who picks up the telephone and says, 'Stop that procession.' It is Gomulka who wants the cardinal detained.

Local people are embarrassed by it. The party suffers. But what can you do?" Last week in Warsaw, following an emotional sermon from the cardinal ("We beg the authorities to stop fearing us and start loving us"), some 1,000 angry student demonstrators marched on party headquarters, defiantly shouting church slogans and singing the national anthem. They were scattered by police armed with tear gas and rubber truncheons. But it seemed unlikely that Wladyslaw Gomulka had heard the last of the protest.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.