Pilgrim in Poland

Some came on foot from the surrounding villages, carrying crosses and banners emblazoned with the names of their parishes. Others arrived in packed buses and trains. At least 150,000 strong, they pushed shoulder to shoulder past the rusty barbed-wire fences into the Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camp, where 4,000,000 died during the Nazi hell. The pilgrims had come to honor one of those dead, a Franciscan friar named Maximilian Kolbe who had stepped forward one day in 1941 to take the place of a family man selected for execution.

Kolbe was put in a starvation cell with nine others, then finally dispatched on Aug. 14, 1941 with an injection of phenol. Just a year ago, in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, Pope Paul VI had declared him "Blessed," the most important single step in creating a saint. Last week's celebration in Poland marked the first anniversary of Kolbe's beatification, and the man he had saved --bent, white-haired Franciszek Gajowniczek, 69--was among the first to speak. "I want to express my thanks," he said haltingly, "for the gift of life."

Brass-Band Welcome. Shortly afterward came a memorial Roman Catholic Mass. The principal celebrant, a graying, robust man whose lean, lined face seemed at home in the crowd of Polish worshipers, was John Cardinal Krol, Archbishop of Philadelphia. Krol's father had come from Poland, and the cardinal won the crowd immediately by addressing them in fluent, if accented Polish. "I was never a prisoner in a concentration camp," he said. "I was never captured or exiled. I never suffered [your] scourges. I bow my head."

Four other cardinals joined Krol as pilgrims to the Kolbe memorial at Auschwitz, including Poland's Primate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, and John Cardinal Wright--the only other American cardinal, besides Krol, ever to enter Communist Poland. But it was Krol's visit that became the gala pilgrim's progress. When he arrived in his late father's home village of Siekierczyna, Krol was greeted by several dozen horsemen in the 17th century uniforms of Polish cavalry, who led him grandly to a brass-band welcome amid throngs of cheering villagers. After Mass in the village church, the cardinal welcomed at least 50 relatives in the parish house.

Krol's visit was more than an old-home week for a Polish-American cardinal. In 1966, when Poland celebrated its 1,000th anniversary, both Krol and Pope Paul VI were denied permission to visit the country. Krol's welcome now is just one sign of a thaw between Poland's government and the Roman Catholic Church. On two fronts, those relations seem to be getting better. Last summer the Vatican appointed six longtime Polish administrators as the regular bishops of dioceses in former German territories, thus recognizing the Oder-Neisse line that West Germany had acknowledged in its 1971 treaty with Poland. On the home front, Party Chief Edward Gierek has accommodated the hierarchy by abolishing a law requiring bishops to keep inventories of all church assets, and by returning churches and convents in the former German territories to church ownership.

Cardinal Wyszynski--whom Krol has invited to visit the U.S.--is still not happy with the building permits that he has been able to scratch up from the authorities for new churches. Only 37 are currently authorized, though some Polish parishes must run Masses all day long on Sundays to accommodate the crowds. An invitation to Pope Paul VI to visit Poland seems still some distance in the future, since it could embarrass the government by revealing the strength of Polish Catholicism.

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