Retired Cardinal Jozef Glemp of Warsaw, who served as primate of the Catholic Church in Poland during the final years of communism and during the restoration of democracy, died Jan. 23 at the age of 83.

Vatican Radio reported that Cardinal Glemp died in a Warsaw hospital; he had undergone surgery almost a year ago as part of his treatment for lung cancer.

The cardinal was a controversial figure in Poland during the communist regime’s imposition of martial law in the early 1980s. While he had urged Catholics not to resist the clampdown, he continued to support the right of priests to speak out in defense of freedom and respect for human rights.

The cardinal was just a young boy when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and sent him as a forced laborer to the wheat fields of the German Reich.

The dual experience of Nazism and communism bred in him a deep-seated wariness toward both West and East. It contributed to Cardinal Glemp’s vision of the Catholic Church as protector of the common man against the powerful.

Cardinal Glemp resigned as archbishop of Gniezno in 1992, when the Vatican restructured the Polish church, but he continued as archbishop of Warsaw until 2006 and as administrator of the archdiocese until 2007.