WYSZYNSKI, STEFAN


Meaning of WYSZYNSKI, STEFAN in English

born Aug. 3, 1901, Zuzela, Pol., near Lomza, Russian Empire died May 28, 1981, Warsaw Polish archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw and primate of Poland. After study at Warsaw, Lomza, and Wloclawek, Wyszynski was ordained on his 23rd birthday, Aug. 3, 1924, and was assigned to the basilica at Wloclawek. After gaining a doctorate in sociology and ecclesiastical law at the Catholic University of Lublin, he studied further in France, Italy, and Belgium. Back in Poland, he founded the Christian Workers University in 1935 and directed it until 1939, when the Nazi and Soviet forces invaded Poland. Shortly after, his bishop, Msgr. Michal Kozal, ordered him to leave Wloclawek, and he thus escaped the fate of 1,811 Polish priests, including his own bishop, who perished in German concentration camps. He returned to Wloclawek as rector of the seminary in March 1945; one year later he was appointed bishop of Lublin, and on Nov. 12, 1948, Pope Pius XII transferred him to the primatial see of Gniezno and, ad personam, of Warsaw. On Nov. 29, 1952, he was named cardinal but was unable to go to Rome to receive formal investiture with a cardinal's red hat until 1957. Meanwhile, although he had signed a coexistence agreement with the Communists, he refused to lend the church's authority to the regime's many acts of persecution. In 1953, during the last repressive spasm of the Stalinist period, he was put under house arrest without trial when the government claimed that he had violated a pledge that the church would punish priests who engaged in anti-government activity. In 1956, shortly after Wladyslaw Gomulka came to power, the Cardinal was released. He concluded an agreement with Gomulka that allowed religious instruction in state schools provided that Communist approval was sought over appointments to higher church offices. Wyszynski's compromise defused a crisis that might have culminated in Soviet invasion and repression, as occurred at that time in Hungary. Gomulka's and Wyszynski's uneasy accord continued even under Gomulka's successor, Edward Gierek, although the Cardinal lent cautious support to such Polish movements as the Workers' Defense Committee, Solidarity, and Rural Solidarity, which sought greater freedom from the late 1970s onward. Doctrinally he was a strong conservative. His last major act was to negotiate with the Polish authorities over the visit of Pope John Paul II to Poland in 1979.

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