SECRET INFORMATION
on the religious-political situation in Poland
Excerpts from a report from the Primate of Poland,
Cardinal August Hlond, to Pope Pius XI
Rome, 14 March 1932
Characteristics of the governing class
The greater part of the governing coalition is made up of people who are religiously indifferent and positively adverse to Catholicism: Socialists, freethinkers, sectarians, apostates, and Freemasons. […] The present-day government, with the rarest exceptions, is made up of Officers of [Piłsudski’s] Legions with a mediocre intellectual culture and little political preparation. Dictatorship is the principal of the government and the military, and it is their method to view and act upon issues. They do not pay much attention to meeting European standards and especially they do not see the need to [use] them in internal administration. […]
The concept of the state has not yet crystalized in the governing program. It oscillates between Fascist and Bolshevik concepts. Yet the omnipotence of the State is one of the foundations o the present political system. The citizen, the individual, does not count for anything. The family is virtually excluded from any influence over the spirit of education in state schools, which promote the cult of Marshall Piłsudski. The nation […] is generally governed in a sectarian sense, pushed toward a non-Christian future.
(The complete 17-page report is contained in the Archive of the Vatican Secretariat of State)
