Only the victors’ voices heard now—Primate

Press, 6 September 1983, Page 8

Only the victors’ voices heard now —Primate

NZPA-Reuter Czestochowa Poland’s Catholic Primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, yesterday warned the authorities against insulting the country’s workers, saying that they were largely responsible for the process of national reform. In an unusually tough sermon before about 100,000 peasant farmers gathered for a harvest service Cardinal Glemp issued a clear defence of Lech Walesa, leader of the banned Solidarity union, who has come under fierce official attack. Cardinal Glemp’s remarks were seen as the Church’s reaction to a tele-

vised confrontation between Mr Walesa and a Deputy Prime Minister, Mieczyslaw

Rakowski, at a meeting in Gdansk on August 25, during which the Minister poured scorn on Mr Walesa and his movement. Looking back on the agreements of August, 1980, that gave birth to Solidarity, Cardinal Glemp said that then it was said there were no victors and no losers. “Three years later we can only hear the voices of the victors,” he said. In an address from the ramparts of Jasna Gora Monastery, Poland’s holiest shrine, he declared: “The losers, deleted from the list of partners from that time, are now worthy only of condemnation.”