Vatican interest in Polish border problem .Michael Wilson's Rome Diary

THE Vatican has been following the vicissitudes of German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpulitik with more than ordinary interest. When frontiers are changed by war, and with them diocesan establishment, it has always been traditional Holy See policy never to implement such diocesan changes until the new frontiers have received international recognition by treaty.
In the situation after the last war, involving especially the Oder-Neieee areas. the Holy See had maintained this tradition. refusing to stabilise new dioceses until the frontiers had become de jure and not merely de facto.
But since the physical needs of the peoples of those areas had changed with the influx of Poles and the departure of Germans, the Holy See had ap pointed Polish Apostolic Administrations. Now it is hoped that it will soon be possible to make these residential Sees.
The three Oder-Neisse areas, each with an Apostolic Administrator but all listed under Breslavia in the Pontifical Annuary, will undoubtedly come under a new Annuary listing of Wroclaw the Polish name for Breslau). It is considered probable. too, that the present three dioceses will remain substantially unchanged, with Archbishop Boleslaw Kolminek, now • Apostolic Administrator for the central part of the former Breslau archdiocese, becoming the Metropolitan.
Archbishop Kolminek's name is frequently mentioned as a possible third cardinal for Poland. whose Primate is Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski.
The Vatican's special interest
in Chancellor Brandt achieving his Osipohrik treaties was emphasised most unusually last week when Prof. 'Federico Alessandrini, the Holy See spokesman, wrote a 600-word
commentary in the semi-official Vatican weekly L'Oscervatore della Domenica, supporting the proposed treaties.
"These men know very well that the Ostpolilik is, in the final analysis, a real potitik." said Prof. Alessandrini of Herr Brandt's opposition. (it is) "an act of realism that takes into account a situation which was de facto and 'provisional when it was defined at Potsdam in 1945 but which, as the years passed, became permanent at least to the extent that it could not be changed as things stand by peaceful means."
These were unusually strong words from a Vatican spokesman. But the Holy See. too, has been under pressure from the Poles. an intensely Catholic nation, to proclaim residential Sees without waiting for a treaty and is looking forward to "normalising" the situation.
Prof. Alessandrini's paper for he was also, until he became head of the Press Office, the director of it — provoked comment last week in another field. For the first time it published a drawing of a nude man, detailed front view. True, the drawing was a sketch by Leonardo da Vinci which outlined the "ideal architecture" for the "ideal man."
Acting awards
THE Santa Suzanne American Catholic church in Rome, which is also well attended by English residents, is awarding gold medals to two outstanding actresses on Sunday, the feast day of St. Genesius, patron of actors and the performing arts, whose bones lie in the church.
Helen Hayes, veteran of international stage and screen, and Helen Bonfils, who won the New York "Tony" award for her Broadway production of "Sleuth" last year, will be the recipients.
Helen Hayes will be present to get her medal personally but Helen Bonfils' will be accepted on her behalf by Donald Seawell, head of the American National Theatre Association. church and Paullists from all over the world are expected to be present, including Father General Thomas F. Stransky, who was an expert at Vatican Council II and afterwards was very active in the Vatican's Secretariat for Christian Unity, when he worked closely with English Canon William Purdy.
African trials
THE Church in Africa is still undergoing trials and tribulations. with the bishops often being singled out for personal attack or their
pastoral efforts being hamstrung.
Although the permanent Commission of the Bishops' Conference of Zaire has now reached an agreement with the government on reopening the seminaries it was forced to accept the installation of junior branches of the Popular Revolutionary Movement (the official political party) in all seminaries to make sure that the students were politically "sound."
But Cardinal Joseph Malula, Archbishop of Kinshasa, is still an exile in Rome. And now comes news that the Burundi government has ordered the Catholic fortnightly Ndongozi to suspend publication. This paper, the only regular Catholic publication in the country, is in its 33rd year.
Archbishop William A. Carew, the Canadian Papal Nuncio to Burundi and Ruandi, is home in St. John's, Newfoundland, on a well-earned holiday after his visit to Bangladesh a few weeks ago. but Vatican circles say that there is no need for his immediate recall.