Tributes for first Catholic premier

Polish Church leaders have praised the work of Eastern Europe’s first post-Communist Catholic head of government, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who died on Monday in Warsaw aged 86, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.

“As a person of deep spirituality, he built his personality, private life and public activism on Christian values – not as some empty slogan or tool for obtaining concrete goals, but as an authentic foundation,” Archbishop Jozef Kowalczyk, Poland’s Catholic primate, said. “Dialogue was the only effective way of resolving conflicts and problems for him. He could talk to everyone.” After 11 years as a member of the Communist-controlled State Assembly, Mazowiecki became a prominent dissident, becoming an adviser to the Solidarity union and its leader, Lech Walesa, in August 1980.

Interned when Solidarity was crushed by martial law in December 1981, he helped organise round-table negotiations in 1989, and served as Polish premier from August 1989 to December 1990.

In a 1990 Tablet interview, Mazowiecki said he was grateful for the Church’s “fundamental role” in supporting his government, and he hoped Poles would find their “deepest foundations of value” in the Catholic faith.