Polish Concordat of 1925. Origin - Provisions - Execution

Abstract

The paper is an elaborated version of a talk presented at the international conference on „Dal Concordato del 1925 al Concordato del 1993. Convengo in occasione dell’ 80° anniversario del primo Concordato fra la Repubblica di Polonia e la Santa Sede” held at the Papal University Georgiana in Rome on 15 November 2005.

It contains a comprehensive analysis of the reasons prompting a state to enter into a concordat agreement, discusses its main provisions and the process of its implementation and execution. In this context, particular attention is has been given to the negotiations carried out by Poland and Vatican, with special emphasis on the role of Prof. Stanisław Grabski, a role that had been till very recently completely unknown. Those finding are a result of the author’s research carried out in British and American archives.

Those deliberations are accompanied with an analysis of the reasons why the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic decided to declare the concordat no longer valid in 1948, which brings in some new elements to the discussion among researches that has been going on for more than sixty years.