Unrest in the Cardinal's Flock

A parish protests Glemp 's transfer of a courageous priest

As 2,000 Poles sang patriotic anthems, hundreds of hands in the newly built church shot up in V-for-victory signs. Encamped in a side chapel, beneath a red-and-white banner bearing the image of the Madonna, a dozen protesters proclaimed a fast; they would drink only spring water. Still other parishioners vowed to keep a daylong prayer vigil. The demonstration that unexpectedly erupted last week in the Church of St. Joseph the Worker, a parish in the Warsaw industrial suburb of Ursus, recalled dozens of similar protests during the bitter days of martial law. But in one respect it was remarkably different: for the first time Poles gathered to show their displeasure not with the Premier, Wojciech Jaruzelski, but with Jozef Cardinal Glemp, Primate of the influential Roman Catholic Church.

Such a challenge to church authority would have been unthinkable in the days of Glemp's predecessor, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, who died in 1981. The much revered prelate had preserved, almost singlehanded, the authority of the Polish church during more than three decades of Communist rule.

Glemp's troubles began when he ordered Father Mieczyslaw Nowak, 40, who had served for seven years as a priest in the Ursus church, to move to a rural parish of Leki Koscielne. Normally the transfer would have gone unchallenged. But Nowak was an outspoken supporter of Solidarity, the disbanded independent trade union. His name had appeared on a government list of 69 priests under investigation for possible illegal activities. Since the Church of St. Joseph the Worker draws its members from the nearby Ursus tractor factory, a sprawling plant that was once famous as a union stronghold and a center of support for Solidarity, faith in the ideals of the movement is deeply rooted in the parish. Church members suspected that Glemp had yielded to growing pressure from the state to silence Nowak, and they decided to take action. Said a gray-haired parishioner who supported the protest: "We are defending the ideas that Father Nowak represents, the struggle for truth and the Polish church."

While supporters of the banished priest rallied at evening Masses and continued their hunger strike, a delegation took the case to church authorities. With Glemp on a monthlong visit to Brazil and Argentina, Franciszek Cardinal Macharski, who succeeded Pope John Paul II as Archbishop of Cracow, gave the petitioners a sympathetic hearing. But church leaders were not likely to go against the absent Primate and split the church into quarreling factions. Ursus parishioners finally agreed to "suspend" their hunger strike and protests after Nowak appeared at an evening Mass and pleaded with his former congregation to remember that "first of all, I serve the church."

If Glemp does not yield, Nowak's disgruntled flock could take the case to Rome. But Pope John Paul II could only have been dismayed by the troublesome protest. Like Glemp, the Pontiff has apparently come to believe that the Solidarity era is now a thing of the past. During a meeting with a group of Polish pilgrims in Rome last week, John Paul used the past tense in referring to the union. "Solidarity," said the Pope, "has been invested in the history of the Polish soul."

What the Pope has in mind is still not clear. But the Vatican and the Warsaw government have been conducting negotiations with a view toward establishing diplomatic ties with Poland's Communist regime. If the Pope succeeds, Poland would be the only nation in the Soviet bloc to have diplomatic relations with the church. The Vatican hopes that Warsaw will be the first stop on the road to Moscow. qed