support parties that were opposed to Catholic teaching, was suppressed in 1946. Patriot Priests A notable feature of the antireligious campaign in Poland included "Patriot Priests" who opposed the Church hierarchy and supported Communism. They were rewarded, and even sometimes allowed to travel to Rome. Some of them had experienced prison camps; some had been chaplains to the Red Army during World War II. The bishops often let them remain at their posts, although they were commonly ostracized by the laity; these priests failed to achieve much popular support. The state supported priests who collaborated with them; the remainder of the clergy was accused of reactionary activities, lack of solidarity with the nation and conspiracy with the Vatican. The government achieved some success in these efforts; an estimated 1,700 out of 11,000 priests in Poland had attended conferences of the "progressives" by 1955. In 1949 the President of Communist Poland, Bolesław Bierut, held a reception at the Belweder Palace in Warsaw for priests who were participating in a conference held by the Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy (ZBoWiD). At the conference some of the priests told Bierut that a lack of agreement between the hierarchy and the government made the work of clergy difficult. Bierut blamed this problem on the hierarchy: the unfavourable attitude of higher Church authorities toward the People's state... In many cases one can hear from priests...words which are often simply criminal, anti-state. Bierut gave cooperative priests privileges including vacations, financial support, tax exemption and protection from punishments under canon law (which were not forbidden by the state). Following this conference, a Commission of Priests attached to ZBoWiD was created, which in the following year commenced publication of a bi-weekly entitled Citizen Priest (Ksiądz obywatel), superseded in the same year by Priests' Forge (Kuźnica kapłańska). They held conferences in almost all provincial capitals. Young priests were forced to enroll in special classes on Marxism, with the intention of causing a schism in the Church. The state also attempted to penetrate the Church through the creation of several other organizations: the Polish Committee of Peace Partisans, the Catholic Social Club, and the Society of Children's Friends. The lay association, PAX, was founded under the leadership of Bolesław Piasecki, a leader of a pre-war fascist organization, and tried to remove the obligation of obedience to the hierarchy from members of the Church; this organization supported the regime's