Pope to Visit Communist Poland

May 27, 1965 - Pope Paul VI will visit Poland next year to help celebrate the millennium of Polish Roman Catholicism, church sources said today.

The sources confirmed reports circulating in the West and in Poland since Polish primate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski visited the Vatican earlier this month.

The sources said the Pope will arrive in Poland May 3, 1966, and will visit Poland’s Roman Catholic shrine of Czestochowa and the country’s oldest diocese of Gniezno and Warsaw.

It would be the first visit by any Pope to a Communist country.

Polish Catholics next year will celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of Roman Catholicism in Poland. Unconfirmed reports from the Vatican said Wyszynski, who returned from Rome Sunday, won the Pope’s assent to join in the celebrations as a “pilgrim.”Western observers said that if church sources were predicting the Pope’s presence, the Polish church must be reasonably sure that it’s country’s Communist government will grant permission.

Wyszynski appeared in public for the first time since his return Sunday. After ordaining 33 priests at Warsaw Cathedral, he delivered the Pope’s blessings to a congregation in a small wooden church in Warsaw’s northern suburbs. He said the Pope praised the faithfulness of Poland’s Roman Catholics.

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