Cardinal Jozef Glemp, who headed the Catholic Church in Poland for more than two decades, died on Wednesday at 83. He became archbishop of Warsaw in 1979 and was made a cardinal in 1981. He held the post of primate of the Polish Church during most of the papacy of John Paul II, who was the first-ever pope hailing from Poland.
When the Communist authorities banned the Solidarity movement of Lech Walesa and imposed martial law in December 1981, Jozef Glemp had only been cardinal for a few months, and had been made a bishop only two years earlier. He made a public appeal, saying: "I ask you, even if I have to do it with naked feet and on my knees: do not start killing each other." Some anti-government activists were critical of his stance, seeing it as too close to the Communist line. Cardinal Glemp said that he "wanted to calm things".
Glemp was repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism, notably for his 1989 remarks resisting an agreement to move a Carmelite convent from Auschwitz. After the World Jewish Congress and other Jewish organizations lodged complaints with the Vatican, Rome agreed in 1987 to relocate the convent in a nearby interfaith center. However, a deadline passed without any action, and the cardinal went on the offensive, saying: “Do you, esteemed Jews, not see that your pronouncements against the nuns offend the feelings of all Poles, and our sovereignty, which has been achieved with such difficulty? Your power lies in the mass media that are easily at your disposal in many countries. Let them not serve to spread anti-Polish feeling.”
He added: “Dear Jews, do not talk with us from the position of a people raised above all others, and do not dictate conditions that are impossible to fulfill.” Later, on a tour of the United States, Glemp told Jewish leaders that he regretted the pain his statements had caused.
In 1997, the cardinal belatedly rebuked the anti-Semitic radio station 'Radio Maryja' and its owner and chief editor Tadeusz Rydzyk, who mingled daily outpourings of hate with prayer. In 2001, Cardinal Glemp was again accused of anti-Semitism when he refused to accompany then-President Alexander Kwasniewski to the village of Jedwabne to apologize for the 1941 massacre of 1,600 Jews, most of them burned alive in a barn by Polish neighbors. The cardinal disavowed “ostentatious penance” in advance, and said: “I prefer not to have politicians impose on the Church the way it is to fulfill its act of contrition for the crimes committed by certain groups of people.”
