Poles Hear Priest Condemn Communism

Thousands of Roman Catholic worshipers attending a pro-Solidarity Mass on Sunday night applauded a priest who condemned communism as a false prophet of peace and justice and implicitly urged Poles to boycott national parliamentary elections scheduled in October.

“One may ask whether people’s conscience should be guided by panic and fear of the authorities and an uncritical approval of their propaganda,” the priest, Father Pawel Piotrowski, said at a patriotic “Fatherland Mass” held monthly at St. Stanislaw Kostka Church in northern Warsaw.

He added: “Why cast a vote about which no one will care?”

The crowd, estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000 people, interrupted Piotrowski’s sermon half a dozen times with applause.

St. Stanislaw Church is the burial place of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, the charismatic chaplain of the Solidarity trade union who was murdered last October by three officers of the Polish secret police. Popieluszko began the tradition of monthly patriotic Masses, with strong overtones of a Solidarity rally. In the 10 months since his death, the church has become a national shrine to him and the outlawed union.

The underground Solidarity organization has called on Poles to boycott the October elections to the Sejm, the country’s nominal Parliament. It passed bills last week revoking academic freedoms that the universities had won only three years ago and giving the new, government-sponsored trade unions powers to dole out apartments, subsidized vacations and other inducements to join.

The elections are widely seen as a test of the state’s ability to mobilize a population still resentful at the suppression of Eastern Europe’s only spontaneous and independent worker’s movement.

The bills adopted last week, Piotrowski said in his sermon, “are seen by the public as violations of the rights of workers, students and other citizens.”

Condemning communism as “Christ’s rival,” he said, “We learn of its justice observing the diligence with which the Sejm introduces (these) laws on schools and trade unions.”

As the Mass began, and thousands of people packed surrounding streets and an adjacent park, another priest took nearly 20 minutes to read a list over the public address system of Solidarity delegations present. The parents of Popieluszko and several relatives from Canada were also present, the announcement said.