The Rev. Stanislaus Orlemanski of Springfield, Mass. (TIME, May 8, 15) got home from Moscow last week. He arrived in the U.S. by plane via Alaska, where, finding himself short of funds, he borrowed $200 from a U.S. Army chaplain at Fairbanks. To photographers at Seattle he shouted: "You should be at the front fighting instead of staying at home taking pictures." At reporters he wagged a stubby finger: "I am a tired man. It is good to get home but I have no other statement to make." When they persisted, he threatened to "give somebody a trimming."
Man to Man. But by the time he reached Chicago, Father Orlemanski had decided to turn the other cheek. The idea for the trip, he said, was his own. Last January he wrote Secretary of State Cordell Hull asking for a passport to visit Russia "to investigate for myself and study the Polish question." He wrote twice before he received a reply. Then he was referred to Manhattan's Russian consulate. To Father Orlemanski's intense surprise, the answer came not from Manhattan but from Moscow—"direct from Marshal Stalin personally inviting me to come to Russia."
Said the first Roman Catholic priest whom Stalin ever invited to visit him: "1 found him very democratic, very open. As an American citizen I stood up as man to man and talked to Stalin. I told Stalin that the most important problem to solve is the religious problem. He said, 'How would you go about this? What would you do?' I told him I wanted to ask one, two or three questions."
Comrade and Catechist. Father Orlemanski: "Do you think it admissible for the Soviet Government to pursue a policy of persecution and coercion with regard to the Catholic Church?" Stalin: "As an advocate of the freedom of conscience and of worship, I consider such a policy to be inadmissible and precluded." Father Orlemanski: "Do you think that the cooperation with the Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, in the matter of struggle against coercion and persecution of the Catholic Church is possible?" Stalin: "I think it is possible." Stalin then signed the two written questions, gave Father Orlemanski permission to make them public.
Further Orlemanski revelations: "I went to Moscow not as a representative of the Catholic Church, nor as an ambassador of the U.S. State Department, but as a private citizen. ... I am not a Communist and I plainly said so in my public address to the Polish Army. ... I belong to no faction, no clique, nor party."
As for Poland (from which the U.S.-born priest's parents came to the U.S.), Father Orlemanski declared that he had "wonderful news," but it would be revealed "at a later date."
Meanwhile, Washington's Monsignor Michael J. Ready had declared that the priest's trip was "a political burlesque.'' (Father Orlemanski, aggrieved at such "vulgar words," declared it was "not a burlesque but high-class opera.") Nor was Monsignor Ready impressed by Stalin's signature: "What we need from Stalin is his declaration of full religious freedom in Russia, not his signature."