|
THEIR KINGDOM COME -- INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF OPUS DEI |
|
29. The Polish Operation
AS FAR AS IS KNOWN, POLAND WAS OPUS DEI'S FIRST DEEP-PENETRATION operation. It got under way as Banco Ambrosiano in Milan was beginning to develop its offshore network and increased in momentum after United Trading was formed. It reflected to perfection Escriva de Balaguer's affirmation that Opus Dei was a 'disorganized organization'. By that he did not mean an unstructured organization, for with its praxis manuals, norms and customs, constitutions and codex, Opus Dei was almost stiflingly structured. But in reacting to threats against the Church it remained flexible, mobile, alert. The architect of Opus Dei's penetration into Eastern Europe was said to have been Laureano Lopez Rodo, who served as Spanish ambassador to Vienna from 1972 to 1974. His strategy predated the founding of Solidarnosc, the Polish free trade union, by seven or eight years. Because of it, the Austrian capital became the most frequently used gateway into Eastern Europe for Opus Dei's milites Christi, and still today Opus Dei maintains an active presence in Vienna, overseen by Monsignor Juan Bautista Torello, its leading psychologist, working alongside political scientist Martin Kastner, member of a wealthy mercantile family, and Dr Ricardo Estarriol Sesera, a foreign correspondent' for Barcelona's La Vanguardia newspaper. Estarriol and Kastner actively attempted to recruit members of the Polish community in exile who gravitated around the Institute for Human Sciences, set up during Lopez Rodo's ambassadorship by two of Karol Wojtyla's closest friends from Cracow, Krzysztof Michalski and Father Josef Tischner. Wojtyla himself made frequent visits to the Austrian capital during the mid-1970s. Vienna was also well known to Pavel Hnilica, Bishop of Rusado, as it was the western terminus of Pro Fratribus's bible-smuggling route into southern Poland. Hnilica, who in the 1980s enjoyed the Pope's confidence, became to this extent a rival of Opus Dei, when the Prelature began extending its influence inside the papal administration. According to some Vatican-watchers, this may have led to Hnilica's entanglement and later entrapment in Flavio Carboni's devious Operation S.C.LV. While in the 1960s Poland was nowhere to be seen on Opus Dei's political horizons, by the 1970s and 1980s it loomed large. When John Paul II made his first papal visit to Poland in June 1979 for the 900th anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Stanislaus -- Cracow's first bishop -- he was accompanied by an Opus Dei staff, including his personal secretary, Father Stanislaw Dziwisz. Vanguardia correspondent Estarriol was also in the papal 'entourage, reporting the delirious greeting that more than a million Poles gave the Pope when he arrived there. Opus Dei's milites Christi brought to Poland the financial means to form a Catholic underground that would act, if not in outright defiance of, at least in parallel to the government. Its objectives were twofold: to create a strong Catholic press; and to put in place a network of intellectuals and professionals -- few would become actual members, but all were considered doctrinally sound -- to lead a national revival. One of these was a young electrician at the state-owned Lenin shipyards in Gdansk, Lech Walesa. But there were others and out of their efforts grew KOR, a Workers' Defence Committee headed by Jacek Kuron. It was provided with a fund, financed by anonymous grants from the West, to assist families of workers imprisoned or thrown out of their jobs by the government. A key person in transmitting their needs to Rome was Estarriol. By the end of the 1970s, Poland was no longer able to service its $14,000 million bank debt to the West and the economy ground to a virtual standstill. In August 1980 the government ended food subsidies, which raised prices overnight by 40 per cent. In Gdansk, workers occupied the shipyards and formed an illegal strikers' committee that was baptized Solidarnosc. Support for Solidarnosc spread across the country, forcing the government to negotiate the 21-point Gdansk Agreement. Estarriol was there, filing detailed despatches throughout the three-week crisis. He was the first informed when the government accepted to negotiate with Solidarnosc. When the negotiations were interrupted five days later, his paper La Vanguardia ran an exclusive interview with Walesa, and at the end of that August Estarriol reported that the authorities had caved in to the workers' demands. He also revealed that the Church under Cardinal Wyzynski had played a critical role in the final phase of negotiations. The concessions won in Gdansk for all Polish workers included the right to form free trade unions, elect their own representatives, strike in support of grievances and publish union newspapers free of government control. Solidarnosc immediately planned to launch its own national weekly. But Solidarnosc had no funds, and certainly no printing plant. The capital to buy plant, newsprint and pay salaries had to come from somewhere. Again, Estarriol was said to have relayed Solidarnosc's requirements to Rome. The Solidarity movement revolutionized Polish politics. But, explained Walesa, 'nothing would have been possible without the election of Papa Wojtyla, his travel to Poland and the continuous, obstinate and smart work of the Church. Without the Church nothing could have happened.' [1] Jerzy Turowicz, who became editor of the Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powscechny, one of the country's most influential publications, said that because of John Paul II's visit, 'for the first time the Polish people felt strong.' When a distraught Walesa visited Rome in January 1981 Estarriol came with him. The Solidarity rank and file was out of control, refusing to obey the central directorate and the Soviets were concerned. Estarriol reported weeks before that Leonid Brezhnev had called a secret meeting of the Warsaw Pact in Moscow. Walesa feared a Soviet move to crush Solidarnosc. He was said to have met senior Opus Central and CIA strategists in Rome. Three weeks later -- on 9 February 1981 -- General Wojciech Jaruzelski assumed control in Warsaw and prepared to tear up the Gdansk Agreement. Solidarity planned a nationwide protest strike that threatened to turn into general insurrection. Brezhnev responded by ordering a Soviet invasion. When the Pope was informed, he called the Kremlin and told Brezhnev that the strike would be shelved if he called off the invasion. A report by 'Department 20' of the East German Ministry of Public Security recorded that 'within an hour, Brezhnev informed the Pope there would be no military intervention'. John Paul II called Cardinal Wyszynski, then gravely ill. Wyszynski summoned Walesa to his bedside and told him he must obey the Pope's order. Without consulting Solidarity's directorate, Walesa cancelled the strike. And so John Paul II was said to have saved Poland from Soviet invasion. [2] The mood at factories throughout the country turned grim. Uncertain whether they would be able to feed their families or heat their homes during the winter, workers responded by organizing factory sit-ins. With the situation deteriorating, in December 1981 Jaruzelski imposed martial law. Responding to pressure from Moscow, he was determined to force the country back to work and, to show he meant business, overnight he arrested 5,000 Solidarity activists. Financing Solidarity had initially been undertaken by United Trading through the Banco Ambrosiano's offshore network. But by now it meant in effect subsidizing the entire Polish economy. Opus Dei, therefore, turned to Washington. At about this time the Work was said to be seeking to draw closer to President Reagan's Director of Central Intelligence, William J. Casey. A street-smart Irish-American Catholic from Queens, Casey was one of Reagan's most heeded foreign policy advisers. He had made his mark during the Second World War with the OSS, parachuting agents into Germany. After the war he entered private law practice in New York and had made his first million dollars on Wall Street by the age of 40. This qualified him to become Nixon's head of the Securities & Exchange Commission. Under Reagan, Casey was called upon to co-ordinate Washington's response to the Polish crisis. Casey's first reaction was to fly to Rome and consult the Pope. He and two other members of Reagan's inner team, Alexander Haig and Vernon Walters, were Knights of the Sovereign Order of Malta, which gave them instant and confidential access to the papal apartments. But when the Polish crisis broke, Casey's moral fitness to head the CIA was being questioned by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and he was unable to leave Washington. He despatched General Walters in his stead. Over the next five months Walters made a dozen visits to the Vatican. The Walters shuttle prepared the way for a meeting between Reagan and John Paul II that took place on 7 June 1982. The US president agreed to underwrite the Vatican's plan for keeping Solidarity alive. Through Opus Dei, the Church had already spent many millions on the Solidarity cause -- $1,000 million, if you believe Calvi; something less than $450 million, according to Pazienza; or $40 million according to the left-wing American magazine Mother Jones. [3] While President and Pope reviewed the Polish situation, in another corner of the papal apartments Reagan's secretary of state Alexander Haig and national security adviser William Clark were conferring with Cardinal Casaroli and Archbishop Silvestrini on Eastern Europe and the Middle East. According to Vatican sources, Casey had also intended to attend but at the last moment was confronted with a triple intelligence crisis and had to cancel. On 6 June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. The following day, opposition leader Hissan Habre seized power in Chad, successfully concluding a long-planned CIA operation that ended Qaddafi's influence there. Also the CIA expected Iran to launch an offensive against Baghdad within days that it feared would result in the setting up of a fundamentalist Shiite state in southern Iraq. All three emergencies highlighted the US administration's concern with radical Islam. Consequently, the discussions with Casaroli and Silvestrini focused mainly on how to contain the Islamic threat, though this was never reported. In addition to the informal agreement over Poland, Reagan's Vatican meeting was important for two other reasons. First, it came about as a result of Opus Dei's growing influence both in Washington and on a policy level inside the Vatican. Opus Dei had played a determining role in shaping the Vatican's reaction on Poland, giving rise to almost Byzantine rivalry and jealousy between Portillo and Casaroli. But the second key point that resulted from the meeting was the realization that while the Pope's attention remained fixed on Poland the emphasis of American foreign policy had tilted towards dealing with radical Islam. To be sure, the last spasms of Soviet imperialism -- the Kremlin's threat to send the Red Army into Poland and its invasion of Afghanistan preoccupied the Reaganites, but they were more concerned with security of the Middle Eastern oilfields should Islamic extremists take over the region. A Reagan White House aide at the time was Dr Carl A. Anderson, who served as liaison officer for special interest groups -- e.g., Opus Dei -- at the White House. Anderson was an Opus Dei member and as such his apostolate was to attract others in his milieu into the Work. But he was unlikely to have been the only one working inside the Reagan administration, though Opus Dei refuses to provide information on such matters. Nevertheless, with Casey running the CIA, the agency took up the war against Liberation Theology in Latin America like never before. And as Reagan's senior East Europe and Middle Eastern expert, Casey rarely undertook a trip to Europe or the Middle East without first stopping in Rome to exchange views with the Pope. [4] The change in foreign policy focus was brought on by the downfall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the US's principal ally in the Persian Gulf, through which 70 per cent of the West's oil passes. The Shah's ouster by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who like the Pope had no armoured divisions, no squadrons of F-4 Phantoms, and no battle fleet, marked a dramatic turning for modern Islam. As long as the Cold War raged, Communism had been the common enemy of the West and most political commentators refused to take the word of the Prophet all that seriously. But they were wrong; a second confirmation of radical Islam's new assertiveness came two years later when another group of fundamentalists, inspired by the same Ayatollah Khomeini, assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and very nearly succeeded in transforming America's second major ally in the region into an Islamic theocracy hostile to the West. This prompted a reformulation of McNamara's domino theory, giving it a radical Islam dynamic. Reagan's advisers feared that if Egypt fell to Islamic extremists, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf kingdoms would soon follow. Washington's concerns would have been passed on to the Opus Dei establishment at the very least by Carl Anderson, and Opus Central -- with intelligence contacts throughout Europe -- if not already aware of the extremist menace would have begun to react. Indeed it was not long before Estarriol was in Moscow, reporting on Brezhnev's intentions for Afghanistan. In any event, the Spanish ambassador in Moscow, supernumerary Juan Antonio Samaranch, would have kept Opus Dei informed of Soviet preoccupations. After the Vatican agreement, Casey was said to have been 'positively rejuvenated at the prospect of flooding Poland with expensive equipment and cheap agents. He was delighted to take advice from Cardinal John J. Krol [the Polish-American Archbishop of Philadelphia], and to use priests in Poland to spread subversion.' [5] Others he listened to were New York Cardinal Terence Cooke and the new Apostolic Delegate in Washington, Archbishop (now Cardinal) Pio Laghi, formerly the Vatican's top man in Buenos Aires: all strong Opus Dei supporters. Cooke, moreover, was the Grand Protector and Spiritual Adviser of the Knights of Malta. And in 1977, he had travelled to Poland to discuss Paul VI's succession with the Archbishop of Cracow. After the Pope's visit to Poland, Opus Dei's milites Christi became active in organizing training courses, conferences and debates among Polish intellectuals. In 1986, it arranged the first student exchange programme between Poland and the West. That summer the Vienna-based European Forum for Students sent 400 students from ten European countries to work on a half-dozen church construction sites. While in Poland, the volunteer workers participated in a series of seminars on the theme of 'Europe 2000 -- A New Image for Man'. In June 1989, the Polish Communist party was defeated in the country's first free elections since the Second World War. Democracy's return to Poland signalled the death of Communism throughout eastern Europe. A month later, Warsaw re-established diplomatic relations with the Vatican and Opus Dei officially opened a regional vicariat in Warsaw. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Opus Dei quickened its march into Eastern Europe, consolidating with an official presence what previously had been a hidden one. On 15 April 1990, Alvaro del Portillo visited Warsaw. He was met at the airport by his regional vicar, an Argentinian electrical engineer, Esteban Moszoro, who had been ordained in St Peter's by John Paul II eight years before, and by the newly appointed nuncio, Monsignor Joseph Kowalczyk. The next day the Opus Dei prelate bishop met Cardinal Jozef Glemp, the new primate. By then Gdansk had its own mosque, and authorization was about to be granted for the construction of an Islamic centre and mosque in the north-eastern city of Bialystok, financed by a Saudi grant, to mark the 600th anniversary of the settling of Tartars in the region. About 20,000 of their descendants remained. Once the target of Ottoman expansion, as the end of the second millennium approached Poland was again a focus of Islamic regard, but for different reasons. With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the Polish capital became the nerve centre of an international bazaar dealing in surplus Soviet arms and the merchants of death did a brisk business selling the cast-off weapons to Allah's troops. The arms were primarily destined for Islamic fundamentalist groups in North Africa, the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Bosnia. According to author Yvon Le Vaillant, Opus Dei was involved in espionage up to its ears. [6] The Spanish magazine Tiempo, maintained that espionage -- and particularly the 'counter-revolution' branch of Spain's CESID -- was 'the pretty girl of Opus Dei'. [7] Opus Central was therefore well placed to monitor the international arms trade and reportedly at about this time it began to develop corridors of proximity with the more moderate face of Islam. Shortly after Germany's re-unification, Escriva de Balaguer's sons opened centres in Prague, Brno, Budapest, Riga and Stettin. But the Prelature was particularly concerned with developments in the Balkans where Father Stanislav Crnica established the Work's first centre in Zagreb. The distance between Rome and the Croatian capital is only 535 kilometres. Chaos in the Balkans could flood Italy with refugees, inevitably bringing with them the scars of conflict and promise of increased tension as local resources became overstretched. A shrinking resource base breeds insecurity, and insecurity leads to conflict. The formula had been proven in the Horn of Africa and by the 1990s it was being exported by Iran to the Balkans where all the ingredients existed for a descent into a fundamentalist inferno: three religions with a legacy of mutual hatred eyeing each other, certain that the opening skirmishes of the next Crusade had already begun. Before the Church can proclaim a new Crusade, the moral guidelines of the Just War doctrine must be met. But the Just War doctrine had not been invoked in the West since the Battle of Lepanto in the sixteenth century. During the Reagan administration, with their own legate in Baghdad and monitors elsewhere in the Arab world, the Pope's 'intransigent hussars' began revamping the Just War doctrine. With the eruption of conflict in the Balkans their efforts became more urgent. But before the doctrine could be invoked, the updated version had to be accepted by the Church hierarchy. After beatification of the Founder and control of the Vatican finances, this became Opus Dei's most pressing objective. _______________ Notes: 1. Oriana Fallaci, interview with Lech Walesa, Warsaw, 23-24 February 1981. 2. Jonathan Luxmoore, 'The Pope Saved Poland from Soviet Invasion', The Tablet, London, 15 October 1994. 3. Reference to $40 million is made by Martin A. Lee in 'Their Will Be Done', an article appearing in Mother Jones, San Francisco, July 1983. 4. Carl Bernstein, 'Holy Alliance', Time, 24 February 1992, and National Catholic Reporter, 28 February 1992. 5. Peter Hebblethwaite. 'Time's Papal Plot', Tablet, London, 29 February 1992. 6. Le Vaillant, Op. cit., p. 135. 7. Tiempo No. 219, 21 July 1986.
|