Abstrakt

The article presents the way Catholic priests were perceived and written about in Polish magazines in the first years after the introduction of martial law in Poland (1982-1984). At first the press, whose representatives were approved by the communist authorities, avoided sharp judgments about priests. The notorious ruthless attacks against bishop Ignacio Tokay and priest Sylwester Zych constituted an exception. The sanctions against priests who were sentenced for criticizing martial law were not publicized and what is more, it was said that there were not any repressions applied towards them. The open criticism of Pope John Paul II was also avoided, as the communists replaced it with the reprints of foreign texts, obviously those which were unfavourable to the Pope. The communist authorities wanted to convince people that some part of the clergy in Poland supported the government in its ideas, but they could not give any convincing evidence in order to support this fact. When it became clear that the Pope’s pilgrimage planned for June 1983 would finally take place, the way of writing about the church and the clergy in Poland changed almost radically. There were attacks on individual priests. Evident lies were fabricated against them, such as for instance: collaborating with the Nazis (Fr. Blachnicki), cooperating in supplying the Solidarity underground with the explosives (Fr. Popiełuszko), acting to the detriment of the state and the socialist system, and “interfering” in politics.

A particularly active person writing negatively about the church was the government spokesman Jerzy Urban. After the publication of his outrageous text about St. Maximilian Kolbe, he started signing his articles using a pseudonym and at the same time intensifying the tone of his publications. He did not hide his aggression against father Jerzy Popiełuszko. The term “sessions of hatred” was created by him and applied to the services celebrated by father Popiełuszko. Urban’s cooperation with the Polish Security Service (SB) was confirmed after some years by the officers of this department, the perpetrators of Fr. Popieluszko’s murder.