By one of the ironies of history, it was the godless Orthodox seminarist Stalin who made present-day Poland into one of the most Roman Catholic countries in Europe, and indeed in the world. . In the inter-war Polish Republic (19 I 8I 939) at least a third' of the population were of other denominations. This was a source of complicated relations and conflicts. The Yalta and Potsdam agreements, plus the ~nni hilation by the Nazi occupiers of the million Polish Jews, left inside the frontiers of the new People's Polish Republic less than 800,000 citizens belonging to non~Roman Catholic Churches. Thus, at least formally, present-day Poland's population consists of 97 per cent Catholics, or more than 32 million souls. In 1971, the atheist Society for the Propagation of Secular Culture numbered 3 I 6,000 members, who were recently described by one of its leaders, Dr. Wieslaw Myslek, as having purely formal links with this Society (Party members of any standing have to make this gesture). The Roman Catholic Church in Poland is a thriving organization. In 1972 it had 6,437 parishes with 13,518 churches and chapels. Its clergy consists of 18,300 priests, 7,000 more than on the eve of the war (but since then the membership of the Church has grown from approximately 25 million to 32 million). The Primate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, two more cardinals and 67 bishops constitute the Episcopacy, whose authority is rarely questioned inside or outside the Church. The Church maintains 47 higher seminars with more than 4,000 alumni. They are financed by voluntary donations from believers, and from funds collected among Poles living abroad (some ten million, the majority in North America). The government provides funds for the Academy of Catholic Theology in Warsaw, where 800 students complete their higher theological studies. The Academy, created in the Stalinist period, was intended to produce a new type of priest, who could at one and the same time perform his traditional pastoral functions and intellectually accomodate himself and his flock to the materialist secular power. The results until now have deeply disappointed the initiators of the Academy. The 50-year-old Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) is a unique