Mount Saint Marys College - Eagle Yearbook (Orchard Lake, MI)

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118 Mieczyslaw Ledochowski resisted not only Germanization but also Protestantization fostered by the Prussian government and by Bis- marck's Kulmrkampf. Archbishop Ledochowski was subsequently made Cardinal and Prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith which greatly expanded its activities under his direction. ' After the resurrection of Poland in 1919, the centuries-old Cordlfll relations between Poland and the Papacy were once again formallylre- established. Poland's Constitution of March, 1921, declared in Afflfle 14 that the Roman Catholic Church occupied in the State the chief position among other faiths with equal rights. In fulfillment of this constitutional article, a Concordat was negotiated between the Holy See and the Polish Republic. It was signed in Rome by Cardinal Gasparri representing Pope Pius Xl and Vladislav Skraynski and Stanislav Grabski representing the President of the Polish Republic, and ratified in Warsaw on May 30, 1925. This Concordat guaranteed complete free- dom for the Church in the Polish State as well as in its relation with the Holy See. Today alien influences seek to destroy this thousand year old. rela- tionship between Poland and the Papacy. But they shall not prevail, for Poland's loyalty to the Popes is as solid as the rock on which the Papacy rests. Stanley Malinowski lHf PUPES Hllll PULHHIJ Twenty-five Popes occupied the chair of Peter during the calamitous years of the tenth century which have been described by one church historian as the darkest age of the church. One of these Popes, john XIII, Who became Pope in 965 and ruled for seven years, won the last- ing gratitude of the Poles through the centuries by extending the pro- tection of the Holy See over the infant Christian kingdom, shielding it from Germanic expansion. This was the first of many papal interventions on behalf of Poland in subsequent crises in the country's history. In the thirteenth century, when Vladislav the Short tried to reunite Poland, his efforts proved useless and instead he was three times driven from the country. In this crisis, he sought aid from the Vicar of Christ, Boniface VIII, and re- gained his throne through the assistance of the Pope. In 1331, King Vladislav began Poland's long struggle against the Teutonic Knights. In the conflicts which followed, Poland was morally assisted by several Popes, John XXII, Urban V, Boniface IX, and Gregory XII, until her victory at Grunwald in 1415. Another Pope, Urban V, was responsible for the formal establishment of Poland's first institution of higher learning, the University of Kra- kow, founded in 1364 at the behest of Casimir the Great. Among its outstanding alumni were Kopernik and St. john Kanty. In the sixteenth century, when Poland was threatened by Calvinism, Hussitism, and Lutheranism, Pope Pius IV made Bishop Stanislav Hosius a Cardinal and sent the Jesuits to Poland to defend the Catholic faith. Papal interest in the Polish Episcopate, which produced such out- standing reforming Bishops as Martin Kromer, Stanislav Karnkowski, john Solikowski, Bernard Maciejowski and George Radziwill enabled the country to avoid the pitfalls of Protestantism. In the seventeenth century, Pope Clement X called on the Poles to forget domestic quatrels and unite themselves against the Turks. This message was a vital factor in the Polish victory over the Turks at Chocirn. When the Sultan of Turkey tried to extend his rule over southeastern Europe, Pope Innocent XI begged King john Sobieski to come to Europe's assistance and help besieged Vienna. Sobieski heeded the Pope's call and helped save European Christendom by liberating the city. When Poland's neighbors began meddling in Polish affairs in the eighteenth century, Pope Clement XIII called on the entire nation to stand firm in defense of the Catholic faith, contributing to the organi- zation of the Confederation of Bar. When Russia began violently to meddle in Polish affairs, the Pope intervened by insisting on the in- violability of Poland's Catholicism and tried to persuade King Louis XV of France to come to Poland's assistance. In the nineteenth century, Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX in times l l i i l 1 I i l

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and the Empire. During this important period when the strongest worldly power opposed the strongest spiritual force, Poland under King Boleslav' the Bold sided with Pope Gregory VII. It was with the help of Poland, too, that Pope Gregory VII was able to place King Ladislav on the throne of Hungary. Once again during the critical days of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, when the Great Western Schism rent the unity of Christendom in Europe as a result of rival claims to the papal throne-when Euro- pean countries espoused and supported the cause of the anti-popes at Avignon or at Pisa, Poland stood loyally by the Pope of Rome. At the Council of Constance which finally healed the schism, the Polish Arch- bishop, Nicholas Traba, helped in the election of Pope Martin V. When the Protestant Revolt broke out in the sixteenth century en- dangering both Papacy and Church, Poland once again strongly mani- fested its loyalty to the Vicar of Christ. When Pope Leo X issued the Bull Exmrge Domine, on june 15, 1520, condemning forty-one prop- ositions in I.uther's writings, King Sigismund I enforced this Bull and by the Edict of Torun prohibited the introduction of Luther's works into Poland. Sigismund also condemned Lutheranism by statute and demanded strict adherence to the Faith. He ordered the Bishops and Inquisitors to enforce his law. In 1554, the king forbade the nobles to send their sons to the University of Wittenberg, the very center of Lutheranism. Poland continued to work hand in hand with the Holy See in the work of Catholic Reform. In 1561, a delegation was sent from Poland to take part in the deliberations of the Council of Trent. Sigismund II was among the first European monarchs to accept and enforce the Tridentine decrees in his realm. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, the Polish clergy assisted the papacy in its efforts to unite the schismatic Ruthenians with the Catholic Church. Under the leadership of great churchmen, Cardinal Hosius and the Jesuits Skarga and Herbest, the ground was prepared for reuniting the schismatics with the Holy See. Pope' Gregory XIII erected a seminary in Wilno and admitted both Ruthenian and Russian students into various Catholic colleges. In 1596, the Union of Brest brought many Ruthenians to recognize the Pope and to accept his au- thority as Vicar of Christ. Almost simultaneously with these efforts Poland used her influence to bring back to the Church many Armenian Christians, who recognized the authority of the Pope in the seventeenth century. ' When Sweden attacked Poland in 1655, the royal crown rested upon the head of john Casimir. During the invasion, King john Casimir made his famous vows in the presence of the papal legate on the first day of April, 1656. He proclaimed the Blessed Mother Queen and Patroness of Poland. Pope Alexander VII regarded the victory of King john Casimir as a triumph of Catholicism over Protestantism, giving the Polish ruler the title Rex orthodoxur. At the call of Pope Innocent XI, King John Sobieski led a Polish army to Vienna and in 1683 defeated the Turks who threatened Euro- pean Christendom. For this great feat, the Pope headed a list of eminent people who thanked the Polish king personally for what he had done in behalf of the Christian nations of Europe. The sixteenth century religious partition of the Church was' dupli- cated politically in eighteenth century Poland by the triple partition of the Polish kingdom. Poland's great effort to stem the partitions failed, but it left another testimonial of loyalty to the Church in the May Con- stitution of 1791, which proclaimed Catholicism as the dominant re- ligion of the realm. This loyalty was not shaken even in the darkest days of the partitions when josephinism and Germanism in Austrian- held Poland, Germanism and Protestantism in Prussian-held areas, and Russification and Schism in Russian-controlled territories sought to destroy contacts between Poland and the Papacy. Perhaps the' most serious threat to Polish loyalty came in 1852, when, upon the tenderitious and misleading protests of Russia following the November insurrection of 1850, Pope Gregory XVI issued an encyclical to the Polish hierarchy which was greeted with much opposition in certain Polish quarters. But even this matter was successfully smoothed our, though it left its influence in the writings of Mickiewicz and Slowacki. Two outstanding champions of loyaltv to the Church atmeared in Prussian-held Poland when Archbishop Martin Dunin and Archbishop 117

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of Po1and's distress requested public prayers for the Polish nation. In 1893, during the festivities of Pope Leo XIII's episcopal jubilee, 800 Poles made a pilgrimage to Rome. On this occasion, the Holy Father exclaimed: It is a great joy to us to see you, sons of those generous men, who in the past did such great things for the defense of religion and so often merited the praise of our predecessors, they have so much the more right to glory in their ancestors, the more intrepidly they have preserved their faith and virtues, and especially respect and obedience for this Apostolic See, the centre of Christian unity. On March 29, 1894, Pope Leo XIII issued a special letter to the Poles, in which he praised the constant attachment of Poland to the Papacy. After the first world war, Pope Pius XI concluded a concordat with Poland. The document was signed at Rome on February 10, 1925. Ne- gotiations were facilitated by the fact that the Pontiff, Pius XI, had previously been Papal Nuncio at Warsaw. The Polish concordat con- tained two points of importance: first, that the names of Archbishops and Bishops to be appointed by the.Ho1y See were to be submitted to the Polish President for approval, second, that Polish dioceses were to be entirely within the Polish frontiers.The Polish Seym ratified the concordat on March 27, 1925. Shortly after the outbreak of the second world war, when the Polish people once more became the victims of unjust aggression, Pope Pius XII expressed sorrow at the massacre of so many innocent victims and invited all Christian nations to pray for Poland: There is no need to assure you that our heart draws near in compassionate love to all your sons, and in particular to all who are in tribulation, to the oppressed, to the persecuted .... The blood of so many human beings-many of them non-combatants-calls for heart-rending tears for so beloved a land as Poland. The Pope's interest in Poland showed itself also in another incident which is important. This is the beatification proc- ess of three Poles: Maria Teresa Ledochowska, foundress of the So- dality of Saint Peter Claverg the Salesian Priest, Father August Czar- toryskig and Mother Frances Siedliska, foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth. On November 12, 1940, the Sacred Congre- gation of Rites examined the writings of the Servant of God, Maria Teresa Ledochowska. On December 3 of the same year, the Sacred Con- gregation discussed the introduction of the process of beatification of Mother Maria Frances Siedliska. On March 11, 1941, it considered the introduction of the process of beatification of Father August Czartory- ski, whose writings had been previously approved by the Congregation of Rites, on November 12, 1940. The causes of the three Poles, out of 800 under consideration by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, relate to persons who have died in our own generation. Normally, the intro- duction of such processes is delayed for at least fifty or a hundred years after death. Viewed in the perspective of ten centuries, the central theme of the relationship between the Papacy and Poland seems to be that suggested by the beautiful legend of Sandomierz, as told by Zofia Kossak- Szczucka, Poland's greatest contemporary woman novelist. In the six- teenth century, King Sigismund the Old built a cathedral for the glory of God. When the edifice was completed, he sent a delegation to Pope Clement VII for a suitable relic. The Pope received the delegation graciously, but made one unusual request before acceding to the king's petition. Clement asked that a handful of Polish soil be brought to him from Sandomierz, where fifteen Polish monks had been rnartyred by the Tartars in the thirteenth century. The soil was brought and placed in the Pope's hands. Clement took the handful of Polish earth, prayed over it, and then closed his fingers firmly, lovingly over it. Slowly,,drop by drop, to everyone's amazement, blood began to drip from the Pope's clenched hand. In the silence that filled the papal chamber, Clement said: The blood you see is the blood of martyrs. The Polish king has no need to send far for holy relics. Let him dedicate his cathedral to the Holy Martyrs of Sandomierz and enshrine in it some of this soil with the martyrs' bones. Thomas Szczerba THE PUPES Hllll Sl. IIlHRlJ'S When the formal foundations of St. Mary's were laid in 1879, the 119