Bienheureux Jerzy
Popieluszko
Prêtre et
martyr (+ 1984)
- 19
octobre 2019, la Pologne célèbre la mémoire du père Popieluszko, 35éme
anniversaire de son décès, Vatican News...
...Le prêtre
polonais Jerzy
Popieluszko (1947-1984), assassiné à 37 ans, fut notamment l'aumônier des
ouvriers du syndicat 'Solidarnosc' à Varsovie. Reconnu martyr par le pape
Benoît XVI, il a été béatifié le 6 juin 2010 à Varsovie...
Le
prêtre polonais Jerzy Popieluszko reconnu martyr par le pape Benoît XVI
...En août 1980, pendant
la grève de Solidarité aux aciéries de Varsovie, le père Jerry Popieluszko
devient, à la demande des sidérurgistes et par nomination du primat Wyszynski,
aumônier des ouvriers. Il s'engage profondément dans la pastorale des
travailleurs et accompagne le syndicat Solidarité pendant l'état de guerre.
C'est à partir de janvier 1982 que le dernier dimanche de chaque mois, le père
Jerzy Popieluszko célèbre des messes à l'intention de sa patrie. Ces messes
regroupent des milliers de fidèles venant de Varsovie et de différentes régions
de Pologne, devant des hommes à la recherche de la vérité, de liberté et de
justice, assoiffés d'amour et de paix.
C'est le 19 octobre 1984
que le père Jerzy Popieluszko est attaqué alors qu'il revient en voiture de son
service pastoral à Bydgoszcz. Torturé, il est ensuite jeté dans la Vistule,
près de la ville de Wloclawek...
...Son ministère zélé et
son martyre sont un signe éloquent de la victoire du bien sur le mal. Puissent
son exemple et son intercession nourrir le zèle des prêtres et faire naître la
foi dans l'amour... (Benoît XVI - angelus
du 6 juin 2010 )
...Il a exercé son
ministère généreux et courageux aux côtés de ceux qui s'engageaient pour la
liberté, pour la défense de la vie et sa dignité. Son œuvre au service du bien
et de la vérité était un signe de contradiction pour le régime qui gouvernait
alors en Pologne. L'amour du Cœur du Christ l'a conduit à donner sa vie, et son
témoignage a été la semence d'un nouveau printemps dans l'Eglise et dans la
société... (Benoît XVI - angelus
du 13 juin 2010)
...L'Abbé Jerzy
Popieluszko, cruellement assassiné en 1984, devint aussi un symbole dans le
même sens, lui que l'on considère souvent comme le protecteur spirituel du
monde du travail polonais... (Jean-Paul
II au corps diplomatique le 8 juin 1991)
...Assassiné en 1984 à 37
ans, le prêtre polonais Jerzy Popieluszko, a été l'aumônier du syndicat
Solidarność. Béatifié en juin 2010 par Benoît XVI, on célèbre le 19 octobre
2014 les 30 ans de sa mort. Joanna, 30 ans, polonaise, dans l'équipe
'traduction' pour la préparation des JMJ de Cracovie en 2016, nous explique l'importance
de cette figure pour elle et pour les Polonais. (Le
p. Popieluszko, les JMJ et les Polonais)
- Une
guérison présumée miraculeuse attribuée au P. Popieluszko, site portail de
l'Eglise catholique en France, 21 novembre 2014.
« Vaincre avec le bien »
SOURCE : https://nominis.cef.fr/contenus/saint/12617/Bienheureux-Jerzy-Popieluszko.html
Jerzego Popiełuszki, znajdujący się na budynku
lokalnej siedziby związku w Ostrowcu Świętokrzyskim
30-years of Solidarity (Polish trade union) mural in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski (priest Jerzy Popiełuszko in foreground)
Jerzego Popiełuszki, znajdujący się na budynku
lokalnej siedziby związku w Ostrowcu Świętokrzyskim
30-years
of Solidarity (Polish trade union) mural in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski (priest Jerzy Popiełuszko in foreground)
Le 19 octobre :
Bienheureux Jerzy Popieluszko (1947 - 1984)
En août 1980, pendant la
grève de Solidarité aux aciéries de Varsovie, le père Jerry Popieluszko
devient, à la demande des sidérurgistes et par nomination du primat Wyszynski,
aumônier des ouvriers. Il s'engage profondément dans la pastorale des travailleurs
et accompagne le syndicat Solidarité pendant l'état de guerre. C'est à partir
de janvier 1982 que le dernier dimanche de chaque mois, le père Jerzy
Popieluszko célèbre des messes à l'intention de sa patrie. Ces messes
regroupent des milliers de fidèles venant de Varsovie et de différentes régions
de Pologne, devant des hommes à la recherche de la vérité, de liberté et de
justice, assoiffés d'amour et de paix.
C'est le 19 octobre 1984
que le père Jerzy Popieluszko est attaqué alors qu'il revient en voiture de son
service pastoral à Bydgoszcz. Torturé, il est ensuite jeté dans la Vistule,
près de la ville de Wloclawek.
Prière
Prions pour les prêtres
des pays où les chrétiens sont opprimés et persécutés. Que le
Seigneur leur donne la force d'encourager leurs fidèles à toujours plus de foi.
Soyons nous-mêmes des
exemples pour nos frères, invitons-les à plus de foi et d'espérance.
SOURCE : https://hozana.org/publication/98978-le-19-octobre-bienheureux-jerzy-popieluszko
Jerzy Popieluszko
Béatifié Dimanche !
Le prêtre polonais
Jerzy Popieluszko (1947-1984), assassiné à 37 ans, fut notamment l'aumônier des
ouvriers du syndicat « Solidarnosc » à Varsovie.
Reconnu martyr par
le Pape Benoît XVI en décembre dernier, il sera Béatifié le 6 Juin 2010 à
Varsovie.
Vingt-six ans déjà que le
Père Jerzy Popieluszko était jeté dans la Vistule après avoir été torturé à mort.
Elément gênant pour le
régime dictatorial, ce jeune prêtre de
trente sept ans, ami de Lech Walesa et proche de Jean-Paul II était devenu
insupportable en raison de sa popularité.
On peut faire taire un
homme. On n'aliène pas sa conscience. On peut canaliser le pouvoir temporel
d'une Eglise. On ne maîtrise pas le rayonnement de ses martyrs.
La Pologne fête, ce 6
Juin 2010, une de ses grandes figures nationales, en pleine Célébration de la
Fête Dieu, dévotion particulière pour ce prédicateur qui remuait les foules.
Sur décision de Benoît
XVI, l'Église Catholique célèbre sa Béatification à Varsovie. Les Catholiques
de l'Église en France expriment leur sentiment de fraternité à la communauté
Polonaise.
Mgr Bernard Podvin
Porte-parole de la Conférence
des évêques de France
Le Prêtre polonais Jerzy
Popieluszko reconnu Martyr par le Pape
Le Pape Benoît XVI a
autorisé samedi 19 Décembre la publication des décrets concernant le martyre du
Père Jerzy Popieluszko.
Né Alphonse Popieluszko
le 14 Septembre 1947, le Père Jerzy Popieluszko a été Baptisé dans l'église du
village d'Okopy, près de Suchowola.
Il a été élevé dans une
famille très Catholique, où la Prière était quotidienne et la fidélité à l'Evangile.
Entré au séminaire de
Varsovie, il effectue son service militaire de 1966 à 1968, où il est assigné à
la caserne de Bartosczyce, dans la zone frontalière nord-est du pays.
De santé fragile, le Père
Jerzy Popieluszko a particulièrement souffert des pressions exercées à l'encontre
des séminaristes.
Sous une Pologne
communiste, les séminaristes étaient en effet soumis à des pressions très
fortes : la Prière, en commun ou personnelle, à voix haute était interdite, de
même que le port des insignes religieux et la lecture de livres sur les sujets
religieux.
Le Père Jerzy Popieluszko
est ordonné prêtre le
28 Mai 1972 par le cardinal Stefan
Wyszynski.
Il exerce ses fonctions
pastorales en tant que vicaire de paroisses à
Zabki, à proximité de Varsovie, de 1972 à 1975, puis à Anin de 1975 à 1978, et
à Varsovie même, à la paroisse de
l'Enfant Jésus.
En 1979-1980, il assure
la catéchèse des
étudiants en médecine à l'église académique Sainte Anne à Varsovie.
Il est également nommé
membre du Corps consultatif national pour la pastorale du service de santé et,
sur le territoire de l'archidiocèse de Varsovie, aumônier diocésain du
personnel de santé.
A partir de Mai 1980, il
exerce son ministère dans
la paroisse Saint-Stanislas-Kostka
à Varsovie, où il dirige la pastorale spécialisée du personnel de santé.
Il organise des
rencontres religieuses de formation et de Prière pour les étudiants en
médecine, pour les infirmières des hôpitaux et pour les médecins.
En août 1980, pendant la
grève de Solidarité aux aciéries de Varsovie, le père Jerry Popieluszko
devient, à la demande des sidérurgistes et par nomination du primat Wyszynski,
aumônier des ouvriers.
Il s'engage profondément
dans la pastorale des travailleurs et accompagne le syndicat Solidarité pendant
l'état de guerre.
C'est à partir de Janvier
1982 que le dernier Dimanche de chaque mois, le père Jerzy Popieluszko célèbre
des messes à
l'intention de sa patrie.
Ces messes regroupent
des milliers de fidèles venant de Varsovie et de différentes régions de
Pologne, devant des hommes à la recherche de la vérité, de liberté et de
justice, assoiffés d'Amour et de Paix.
C'est le 19 Octobre 1984
que le Père Jerzy Popieluszko est attaqué alors qu'il revient en voiture de son
service pastoral à Bydgoszcz. Torturé, il est ensuite jeté dans la Vistule,
près de la ville de Wloclawek.
Les funérailles du Père
Jerzy Popieluszko furent Célébrées le 3 Novembre 1984 à Varsovie. Son corps
repose sur la terre de sa dernière paroisse,
Saint-Stanislas-Kostka à Varsovie.
D'après Nous voulons
Dieu, de Didier Rance, éd. Aide à l'église en détresse.
.jpg)
Jerzy Popiełuszko - zdjęcie z Europeany
i Cyfrowego Archiwum Pamiątek
Un miracle dans le
Val-de-Marne ouvre la voie à la Canonisation du Père Popieluszko
C'est ce samedi 20
Septembre 2014, lors d’une Messe Célébrée au Monastère de l’Annonciade à
Thiais, que Mgr Santier annonce l’ouverture de l’enquête pour la Canonisation
du Père Popieluszko.
"On est toujours
trop petit pour une telle grâce. Devant le passage de Dieu, on se sent
tout petit", confie Mgr Michel Santier, au
micro de Cyprien Viet, de Radio Vatican.
L'Évêque de Créteil ne
cache pas son émotion face à cette étonnante aventure spirituelle (lire
notre article à ce sujet), lui qui avait justement confié son diocèse à
l’intercession du Martyr polonais lors d’un voyage en Pologne, un an avant
cette guérison, le 14 Septembre 2012.
Ce samedi, lors d’une
Messe Célébrée au Monastère de l’Annonciade à Thiais, dans le département
français du Val-de-Marne, l’Évêque de Créteil annonce donc officiellement que
la Congrégation pour la cause des Saints a ouvert la procédure de Canonisation
du Père Jerzy Popieluszko.
Le monde entier se
souvient de ce Prêtre polonais, torturé et tué par la police politique
polonaise en 1984. Il était alors devenu l’icône de la résistance polonaise au
régime communiste.
Le Père Jerzy Popieluszko
avait été Béatifié en 2010 lors d’une Cérémonie organisée à Varsovie, à
laquelle avait assisté sa mère, décédée depuis.
" Il est déjà
béatifié, mais il n'y a pas eu besoin de miracle puisqu'il est
Martyr", explique Mgr Santier.
Mais il n'en va pas de
même pour la Canonisation. Et c’est justement une guérison aussi étonnante que
soudaine, qui pourrait bien être reconnue comme le miracle initiant la
procédure.
"La guérison s'est
passée dans le diocèse, à l'hôpital Albert-Chenevier, raconte l'Évêque de
Créteil.
La personne présumée
guérie souffrait d'un cancer. Les médecins avaient décidé d'arrêter le
traitement, et avaient dit à son épouse que c'était la fin. Elle avait déjà
pris contact avec les pompes funèbres."
Mais une Sœur polonaise
de l'aumônerie de l'hôpital l'a convaincue de faire appel à un
Prêtre. "Le Père Bernard Brien, qui venait tout juste d’être ordonné
Prêtre en « vocation tardive » était né le même jour que le martyr
polonais, le 14 Septembre 1947.
Il lui a donné le
Sacrement des malades, et a terminé en sortant une image du Père Popieluzko.
Il a prié, il s'est
adressé au Seigneur en disant "aujourd'hui c'est notre anniversaire. Il
faut que tu fasses quelque chose, c'est le moment d'intervenir."
L'épouse que j'ai reçu
m'a dit qu'aussitôt après, il avait ouvert les yeux. Le lendemain, la Sœur est
venue le visiter ; elle a vu qu'il n'était pas dans son lit, et a cru qu'il
était décédé. Puis elle a vu qu'il était debout et qu'il marchait.
Le rapport des médecins a
constaté qu'il n'y avait plus de cellules cancéreuses."
Il revient donc à
l’ordinaire du lieu, en l’occurrence l’Évêque de Créteil, d’annoncer
officiellement l’ouverture de l’enquête pour la Canonisation du Père
Popieluszko.
" La Sœur polonaise
était très heureuse, c'est elle qui a prévenu Varsovie, se souvient Mgr
Santier.
A la demande du Cardinal
Nisz, Archevêque de Varsovie, qui a prévenu la Congrégation des Saints, nous
allons ouvrir cette enquête ce samedi, en vue de la reconnaissance d'une
guérison miraculeuse mais présumée.
C'est la cause des Saints
qui instruira et la présentera au Pape, qui en définitive prend la décision.
Après, si cette guérison
est reconnue, cela initiera le processus de Canonisation du père
Popieluszko."
Découvrez
sur KTO un documentaire consacré à la vie du P. Jerzy Popieluszko
.jpg)
Statue
de Jerzy Popiełuszko, Sieradz, Pologne
Père Jerzy Popieluszko :
ultime étape vers la Canonisation
L’enquête (voir
ci-dessus) du diocèse de Créteil concernant une guérison attribuée à
l’intercession du Bienheureux Jerzy Popieluszko, a été envoyée à Rome ce Lundi
14 Septembre 2015.
C’est la fin d’une longue
et minutieuse enquête pour le diocèse de Créteil. Les conclusions de l’équipe
d’experts chargés d’étudier la guérison attribuée à l’intercession du bienheureux Père Jerzy
Popieluszko, devaient être envoyées à Rome ce lundi 14 septembre 2015.
Mgr Michel Santier,
Évêque du Val-de-Marne, annoncera officiellement la nouvelle au cours de la
Messe célébrée à la Cathédrale de Créteil ce même jour.
Une date symbolique, qui
commémore à la fois l’anniversaire de la naissance du Père Popieluszko et la
guérison inexpliquée de François A., un français âgé aujourd’hui de cinquante-huit
ans, hospitalisé à Créteil.
Le 14 Septembre 2012 en
effet, le Père Bernard Brien, un Prêtre du Val-de-Marne confie le patient
atteint d’une leucémie rare depuis plus de dix ans, à l’intercession du
Bienheureux. Le lendemain, François se lève de son lit, alors qu’il venait de
recevoir les derniers Sacrements. Quelques semaines plus tard, il est
totalement guéri de façon inexpliquée.
La Canonisation pourrait
être proche
Ce sont les détails de
cette guérison que les experts ont dû explorer durant plusieurs mois. L’enquête
doit désormais être approuvée par la Congrégation pour la cause des Saints,
pour que l’Église puisse officiellement décréter le caractère miraculeux de la
guérison.
Si celle-ci était
confirmée par Rome, le Père Popieluszko pourrait être Canonisé rapidement.
Ordonné Prêtre en 1972 en
Pologne, ce jeune Prêtre polonais fut l’aumônier du syndicat Solidarność
de Lech Walesa.
Après l’instauration de
la loi martiale par le général Jaruzelski en Décembre 1981, il aide les
militants du syndicat poursuivis et persécutés.
Vicaire à la paroisse
Saint-Stanislas de Varsovie, le Père Popieluszko célèbre des Messes qui
attirent des milliers de fidèles, venus de toute la Pologne.
Il dénonce inlassablement
la violence, invitant à « vaincre le mal par le bien ». Fiché parmi
les « Prêtres extrémistes », il est enlevé puis
assassiné en octobre 1984, à l’âge de 37 ans, par un commando de la police
du régime communiste.
Un Prêtre, exemple pour
la nouvelle évangélisation.
« Jerzy Popieluszko,
messager de la Vérité »
Anita Bourdin
ROME, Lundi 22 Octobre
2012 (ZENIT.org) – Le Bienheureux Prêtre polonais
Jerzy Popieluszko est un « exemple pour la nouvelle évangélisation »,
estime Mgr Eterovic.
Les pères synodaux et les
autres participants à la XIIIe assemblée générale ordinaire du synode des
évêques ont en effet été invités à la projection du film “Jerzy Popieluszko,
messager de la Vérité” à l’Institut Maria Bambina, près du Vatican, à mercredi
17 Octobre.
Des extraits du film sur
la vie du Bienheureux ont également été projetés au terme de la 15e
Congrégation générale du 17 Octobre en la salle du synode.
Le secrétaire général du
synode des Évêques, Mgr Nikola Eterovic, a qualifié la vie du Prêtre polonais
« d’exemple pour la nouvelle évangélisation ».
Le P. Jerzy Popieluszko (1947-1984) a été assassiné à 37 ans. Il était notamment l'aumônier des ouvriers du syndicat « Solidarnosc » à Varsovie.
Reconnu Martyr par le
Pape Benoît XVI en Décembre dernier, il a été Béatifié le 6 Juin 2010 à
Varsovie.
Lors de l’angélus du 13
Juin, 2010, Benoît XVI a évoqué le Martyr polonais en disant : « Il a
exercé son Ministère généreux et courageux aux côtés de ceux qui s'engageaient pour
la liberté, pour la défense de la vie et sa dignité. Son œuvre au service du
bien et de la vérité était un signe de contradiction pour le régime qui
gouvernait alors en Pologne. L'amour du Cœur du Christ l'a conduit à donner sa
vie, et son témoignage a été la semence d'un nouveau printemps dans l'Eglise et
dans la société ».
Le 6 Juin, le Pape avait
dit : « En Août 1980, pendant la grève de Solidarité aux aciéries de
Varsovie, le père Jerry Popieluszko devient, à la demande des sidérurgistes et
par nomination du primat Wyszynski, aumônier des ouvriers. Il s'engage
profondément dans la pastorale des travailleurs et accompagne le syndicat
Solidarité pendant l'état de guerre. C'est à partir de Janvier 1982 que le
dernier Dimanche de chaque mois, le Père Jerzy Popieluszko Célèbre des Messes à
l'intention de sa patrie. Ces Messes regroupent des milliers de fidèles venant
de Varsovie et de différentes régions de Pologne, devant des hommes à la
recherche de la vérité, de liberté et de justice, assoiffés d'amour et de paix.
C'est le 19 Octobre 1984 que le père Jerzy Popieluszko est attaqué alors qu'il
revient en voiture de son service pastoral à Bydgoszcz. Torturé, il est ensuite
jeté dans la Vistule, près de la ville de Wloclawek. Son Ministère zélé et son
Martyre sont un signe éloquent de la victoire du bien sur le mal. Puissent son
exemple et son intercession nourrir le zèle des Prêtres et faire naître la Foi
dans l’Amour ».
L'une des phrases les
plus célèbres du P. Popieluszko touche la proclamation de la Vérité :
« Le devoir du Chrétiens est de promouvoir la Vérité même si le prix est
très élevé. Parce que la Vérité se paie (...). Prions pour ne pas se laisser
intimider, pour être libérés de la peur et surtout du désir de la violence et
de la vengeance. »
Il a été assassiné le 19
Octobre 1984. L'Église célèbre sa Fête le 19 Octobre, jour de sa
« naissance au Ciel », son « dies natalis ».
Gdańsk, Plac Solidarności. Tablica - Jerzy Popiełuszko.
Bienheureux Jerzy
Popieluszko
Assassiné en 1984 à 37
ans, le prêtre polonais Jerzy Popieluszko, a été l'aumônier du syndicat
Solidarność. Il a été béatifié en juin 2010 par Benoît XVI. Il pourrait être
canonisé prochainement après un miracle intervenu en 2012 à Créteil.
Jerzy Popieluszko est né
en 1947 à Okopy, un petit village du nord-est de la Pologne, dans une famille
modeste de paysans. Il entre au séminaire à Varsovie, à l'âge de 18 ans.
Un prêtre engagé
Aumônier du
syndicat Solidarność de Lech Walesa, le père Popieluszko aide ses militants
poursuivis et persécutés après l'instauration de la loi martiale par le général
Jaruzelski en décembre 1981.
Vicaire à la paroisse Saint-Stanislas de Varsovie, le père Popieluszko célèbre des messes qui attirent des milliers de fidèles, venus des quatre coins de Pologne.
Dans ses homélies, le
père Popieluszko dénonce ouvertement la répression policière, la censure et les
persécutions des opposants au régime : "La violence n'est pas une
preuve de force, mais de faiblesse. Celui qui n'a pas su s'imposer par le cœur
ou par l'esprit, cherche à gagner par la violence«, disait-il en pleine loi
martiale. Son mot d'ordre : »vaincre le mal par le bien".
"En réclamant la vérité, nous devons la prêcher nous-mêmes. En réclamant la justice, nous devons être justes avec nos proches. En demandant le courage, nous devons nous-mêmes être courageux chaque jour", dira-t-il quelques mois avant sa mort.
Le père Popieluszko est
enlevé au retour d’une visite pastorale et assassiné en octobre 1984, à l'âge
de 37 ans, par un commando de la police du régime communiste.
Béatifié en 2010
Le procès en
béatification du père Jerzy Popieluszko a été ouvert en 1997 par le pape Jean
Paul II. Benoît XVI a évoqué la figure de père Jerzy Popieluszko lors de
l’Angélus du juin 2010 quelques jours après sa béatification : "Il a
exercé son ministère généreux et courageux aux côtés de ceux qui s'engageaient
pour la liberté, pour la défense de la vie et sa dignité. Son œuvre au service
du bien et de la vérité était un signe de contradiction pour le régime qui
gouvernait alors en Pologne. L'amour du Cœur du Christ l'a conduit à donner sa
vie, et son témoignage a été la semence d'un nouveau printemps dans l’Église et
dans la société."
Vers la canonisation
Le 14 septembre 2012, la
guérison d’un malade hospitalisé à Créteil relance le procès en canonisation du
Père Jerzy Popieluszko ouvert en Pologne. Une commission d’enquête composée de
deux notaires français et polonais, du délégué épiscopal pour la canonisation
de Jerzy Popieluszko et d'un spécialiste du droit canon, interroge de nombreux
témoins dont le père Brien.
Le Père Bernard Brien est
appelé le 14 septembre 2012 en urgence auprès d’un patient hospitalisé en soins
palliatifs à l’hôpital Chenevier de Créteil. Ce patient, atteint d'une leucémie
depuis 2001 est pratiquement dans le coma. Le père Brien lui administre le
sacrement des malades en présence de sa femme. Puis, il le confie à la prière
du Père Jerzy Popieluszko avec ces quelques mots : «Écoute Jerzy,
nous sommes le 14 septembre, c’est ton anniversaire et le mien, donc si tu dois
faire quelle chose pour notre frère François, c’est le jour !» Le
lendemain, le malade se porte bien à la stupéfaction de son entourage ; et
l’équipe médicale observe un recul net de la maladie. Après de nombreuses
analyses, les médecins constatent une guérison rapide, totale et inexpliquée du
cancer.
En son for intérieur, le
père Brien est persuadé qu’il s’agit d’un miracle, mais il garde le secret de
cette guérison car, dit-il «pour qu’un miracle soit reconnu, la guérison
doit être spontanée et totale, ce qui était le cas, mais elle doit aussi se
vérifier dans le temps. La patience s’imposait.» Il informe Mgr Santier de
la guérison en mai 2013 qui prévient le père Tomasz Kaczmarek, postulateur de
la cause du père Jerzy. Après de nombreuses discussions, Mgr Santier, à la
demande de l’archevêque de Varsovie, ouvre une enquête diocésaine. Celle-ci
aboutit en septembre 2015 à reconnaître l’authenticité du miracle.
Les conclusions de
l'enquête ont été envoyées à Rome à la Congrégation pour les causes des Saints
à Rome qui présentera le dossier au pape, seul habilité à décréter la
canonisation du père Jerzy Popieluszko.
Geneviève Pasquier
SOURCE : https://croire.la-croix.com/Definitions/Lexique/Saint/Bienheureux-Jerzy-Popieluszko
.jpg)
Jerzy Popiełuszko - meeting with
workers in Stocznia Gdańska, at the Gdańsk Shipyard
http://fbc.pionier.net.pl/zbiorki/dlibra/docmetadata?id=25
Andrzej
Iwański
Le Bienheureux Père Jerzy
Popiełuszko, martyr de la foi, a vaincu le mal par le bien.
La Pologne célébrait le
19 octobre dernier le 35ème anniversaire de la mort du bienheureux père
Jerzy Popiełuszko, martyr, combattant pour la vérité. Interview autour de cette
belle figure avec Joanna Chlebicka, en mission à Procida (Italie).
TdC : Peux-tu
présenter brièvement ce bienheureux si cher aux polonais ?
JCh : Jerzy (George)
Popiełuszko (1947-1984) est un prêtre et martyr Polonais. A l’époque de la
Pologne communiste, il raffermissait la société, enseignant à vaincre le mal
par le bien et offrant la souffrance de ses compatriotes sur l’autel
eucharistique. Les messes pour la patrie qu’il a célébré rassemblaient des
milliers de croyants de toute la Pologne. Elles étaient un oasis de liberté et
une communauté de prière intense. Le 19 octobre 1984, le père Jerzy fut enlevé
et sauvagement assassiné par les autorités communistes. Il avait 37 ans et 12
ans de sacerdoce. Il a été béatifié par le Pape Benoît XVI en 2010.
TdC : Il fut nommé
par l’épiscopat polonais comme aumônier du mouvement Solidarité. Pourquoi
une telle nomination, pourquoi ces personnes avaient-elles besoin d’un pasteur
? De quoi souffraient-elles et en quoi consistait sa mission ?
JCh : Le Père Jerzy
Popiełuszko était le pasteur de la communauté médicale (médecins, infirmières,
étudiants en médecine). Comme prêtre, il voulait être là où régnait la plus
grande souffrance. C’est ainsi que, d’une manière naturelle, un lien fort
s’établit entre lui et le monde des travailleurs. Il devint aumônier
de Solidarité parce que les ouvriers étaient le groupe le plus
nombreux et le plus vulnérable dans le système communiste. Le syndicat
indépendant Solidarité leur permettait de lutter ensemble pour des
conditions de travail et de vie décentes.
La société Polonaise
connut de vastes répressions, surtout après l’introduction de la loi martiale –
licenciement (dans un système où l’État était le seul employeur, il n’était pas
possible d’obtenir un nouvel emploi), emprisonnement et internement,
arrestation et torture, écoute clandestine, surveillance, interdiction des
rassemblements publics, censure, manque d’accès aux produits essentiels dans
les magasins. Telle était la réalité dans laquelle vivaient les Polonais. Le
père Jerzy croyait que le rôle du prêtre était de placer ces souffrances de la
nation sur l’autel de l’Eucharistie, les reliant au sacrifice du Christ.
TdC : Toute la
génération se souvient de la voix du bienheureux Jerzy Popiełuszko, qui
prêchait une fois par mois un sermon à la messe pour la patrie. De quoi
parlaient les sermons ?
JCh : Son
enseignement était très riche, mais le plus souvent il revenait à la question
de la vérité, la vérité, qui est le Christ, qui détermine la liberté et la
dignité inaliénable de tout être humain. Quelques phrases de lui sont restées
dans tous les esprits :
– Nous surmontons la peur
lorsque nous acceptons de souffrir ou de perdre quelque chose au nom de valeurs
supérieures. Si la vérité est une telle valeur pour nous, pour laquelle il vaut
la peine de souffrir, il vaut la peine de prendre un risque, alors nous
vaincrons la peur, qui est la cause directe de notre esclavage.
– Un homme qui témoigne
de la vérité est un homme libre, même dans des conditions d’esclavage
extérieur.
– Pour rester
spirituellement libre, il faut vivre dans la vérité (…). La vérité est
immuable. La vérité ne peut être détruite par une décision ou une autre, une
loi ou une autre.
– Seul peut vaincre le
mal celui qui seul est riche en bonté, qui prend soin du développement et de la
croissance en lui des valeurs qui font la dignité humaine d’un enfant de Dieu.
Multiplier le bien et vaincre le mal, c’est prendre soin de la dignité de
l’enfant de Dieu et de la dignité de sa propre personne.
L’homélie des messes pour
la patrie faisait une référence aux grands événements de la vie sociale (comme
la béatification de Maximilien Kolbe, les pèlerinages du pape Jean-Paul II en
Pologne, les anniversaires du soulèvement national au XIXe siècle). Les messes
elles-mêmes étaient mises en valeur par de nombreuses contributions des fidèles :
récitation de poésies, décoration de l’autel, beauté des chants. Le père Jerzy
appuyait souvent ses homélies sur les enseignements du cardinal Stefan
Wyszyński (dont la béatification aura lieu le 7 juin 2020) et du pape Jean-Paul
II.
TdC : Malgré son
énorme influence sur les Polonais de son temps, il était un homme très réservé
et timide.
JCh : Bien qu’issu
d’une famille simple et rurale, il avait une grande sensibilité artistique et
linguistique. Dans ses homélies, cependant, il utilisait un langage simple pour
les rendre compréhensibles de tous. Le père Jerzy était un homme très modeste.
Il était très attentif à chacun. Les gens lui présentaient leurs problèmes,
sachant qu’il ne resterait pas indifférent. C’était un homme en mauvaise santé
et un peu courbé, mais il portait sur ses épaules les problèmes de milliers de
personnes. Dans le même temps, il faisait lui-même l’objet d’une surveillance
exceptionnelle des services spéciaux – écoutes téléphoniques, espions dans le
voisinage immédiat, menaces et tentatives d’intimidation, surveillance
constante, provocations, convocations pour interrogatoires et arrestations. Son
entourage immédiat essayait bien de le protéger, mais tout le monde, y compris
lui, était conscient de la menace qui pesait sur sa vie. Le père Jerzy
considérait que le rôle du prêtre était de proclamer la vérité, de souffrir
pour la vérité, et s’il faut, donner sa vie pour elle.
TdC : Cette année,
l’Eglise Polonaise célèbre le 35ème anniversaire de sa mort, sa figure est-elle
encore importante pour les Polonais et les chrétiens de notre temps
?
JCh : Le père Jerzy
était un prêtre ardent, proche des gens et un grand patriote, c’est donc une
figure très importante pour la nation polonaise. Le culte du Père Jerzy
Popiełuszko ne se limite pas à la Pologne. Il y a déjà plus de 1400 reliques de
1er degré dans le monde, dont 400 hors des frontières de la Pologne, sur
différents continents. Son culte est encore en développement – le processus de
canonisation est en cours. Son enseignement sur la vérité est aussi valable à
l’époque du sécularisme universel qu’il ne l’était à l’époque du
communisme.
TdC : Vous avez
travaillé au Musée Popiełuszko, en quoi consistait ce travail? Quelle est votre
relation avec le Bienheureux ? Pouvez-vous partager quelques anecdotes
avec nos lecteurs ?
JCh : En 2011, le
Cardinal métropolitain de Varsovie, le Cardinal Nycz, a créé le « Centre
de Documentation de la Vie et du Culte du bienheureux père Jerzy Popiełuszko
« . Le siège du centre est situé dans l’appartement du Père Jerzy à la
paroisse St. Stanislas Kostka à Varsovie, où il a passé les dernières années de
sa vie. Le centre dispose d’une grande collection de documents, de
photographies, d’enregistrements audio et vidéo et de documents.
J’ai travaillé au centre
pendant 14 mois (aussi longtemps que durera ma mission avec Points-Cœur) pour
coordonner le projet de numérisation. Ce fut une grande grâce de travailler
dans l’appartement du Père Jerzy, apprenant à connaître les témoins de sa vie,
apercevant chaque jour de la fenêtre un groupe de pèlerins (du monde entier)
venu prier sur sa tombe et écoutant les témoignages sur les grâces reçues par
son intercession. Ils sont la preuve que le père Jerzy est un intercesseur très
efficace pour toutes sortes d’affaires. Le Père Jerzy continue à rassembler des
gens merveilleux autour de lui et cette relation étroite avec eux – dans un
esprit d’amour pour l’Eglise et la Patrie – fut une grande grâce pour
moi.
Propos recueillis par
Clément Imbert
.jpg)
Independence
March Warszawa 2019 /
Marsz
Niepodległości 2019. Warszawa, Rondo Dmowskiego.
Bienheureux Père
Popieluszko : « Écoute Jerzy, c’est le jour, fais-le ! »
ARTICLE | 06/11/2014 |
Numéro 1922 | Par Magali Michel
La guérison miraculeuse,
en 2012, de François Audelan, atteint d'une leucémie, est attribuée au Père
Popieluszko. Témoignage exclusif, en compagnie de son épouse Chantal et du Père
Bernard Brien.
Vous rentrez de Pologne
où vous avez participé à l’hommage rendu au Père Popieluszko trente ans après
sa mort. Quelles sont vos impressions ?
Chantal Audelan – Le
18 octobre, nous étions à Wloclawek, au barrage sur la Vistule, au lieu où le
Père Popieluszko a été jeté à l’eau après avoir été torturé. À cet endroit,
nous avons suivi ses reliques en procession en méditant le rosaire. Puis il y a
eu une messe en plein air, là où s’élève une basilique qui va devenir un
sanctuaire en son honneur. Cette messe a duré tout l’après-midi. La Pologne est
impressionnante de ferveur. On dirait que la foi lui coule dans les veines.
Rien qu’à Cracovie, on dénombre 440 paroisses, 1 170 prêtres, 964 religieux,
2 700 religieuses et 120 séminaristes. Le contraste est saisissant avec la
France.
Le Père Bernard
Brien – Le lendemain, une autre célébration à Varsovie a réuni une foule
venue de toute la Pologne. La présence du syndicat Solidarnosc y était très
forte.
François Audelan –
Il faut se rappeler ce qu’ont vécu ces gens et voir les documents d’époque. Ce
peuple a résisté à une pression folle. Dans les an-nées 80, nous avions des
supermarchés pléthoriques. Eux ne mangeaient pas à leur faim, ne pouvaient pas
parler, et souffraient pour la foi. Ils ont fait masse, ils ont fait corps. Le
Père Jerzy est un exemple parmi bien d’autres, il est loin d’être un cas isolé.
Et votre rencontre avec
la famille Popieluszko ?
C. A. – Nous avons
vu une famille très meurtrie. Mais tous lumineux. Ils sont encore marqués par
la mort du Père Jerzy et par les représailles qui ont suivi ses funérailles
historiques. Stanislas Popieluszko, son jeune frère, sanglotait aux
célébrations. Ils nous ont serrés chaleureusement dans leurs bras. À travers
François, nous avions l’impression qu’ils retrouvaient un petit souffle de leur
disparu.
Mon Père, comment vous
êtes-vous découvert jumeau du Père Popieluszko ?
B. B. – En juillet
2012, quatre mois après mon ordination, je suis parti sur les traces de
Jean-Paul II en Pologne. Durant ce pèlerinage, j’ai découvert dans la banlieue
de Varsovie le tombeau et la paroisse du Père Popieluszko. Attiré par ce
martyr, j’ai réalisé que nous étions nés le même jour, le même mois, la même
année. C’est au retour de ce voyage que j’ai été appelé au chevet de François,
le 14 septembre, jour anniversaire de la naissance du Père Jerzy et de la
mienne.
Retenu pour la
canonisation du bienheureux Popieluszko, un miracle s’est produit à Créteil le
14 septembre 2012. Que s’est-il passé ce jour-là ?
F. A. – En 2012,
j’ai 56 ans, une épouse, trois filles, un métier qui me passionne. On termine
de rembourser la maison de nos rêves. Mais depuis deux ans, je dégringole. Une
leucémie rare découverte onze ans plus tôt évolue à toute allure. Je reçois une
greffe de moelle osseuse en mai. Fin août, « il y a des métastases partout ».
Le scanner est sans appel. À ce stade, seuls des traitements de confort sont
préconisés. Le 11 septembre, j’entre en soins palliatifs à l’hôpital Albert-Chenevier
de Créteil.
C. A. – Dans le
couloir, Sœur Rozalia, une religieuse polonaise de l’aumônerie, me propose le
sacrement des malades pour mon mari. J’accepte volontiers connaissant la force
immense apportée par ce sacrement déjà reçu trois fois depuis que François est
malade.
B. B. – Le vendredi
14 septembre, appelé en début d’après-midi par cette même religieuse, je file à
Albert-Chenevier. Elle me conduit dans la chambre, où je vois un homme au
visage bouffi en phase terminale.
C. A. – Le Père Bernard
a posé sur la table de chevet une bougie, la croix de Jean-Paul II et l’image
d’un prêtre martyr polonais.
Une fois le sacrement donné, il nous propose de
confier François à l’intercession de ce jeune martyr du communisme.
L’image
du Père Jerzy en main, nous lisons la prière d’action de grâce. François est
somnolent.
B. B. – Arrivé à la
phrase « Accorde-moi par son intercession la grâce de… », je complète :
« Écoute Jerzy, c’est aujourd’hui le 14 septembre, c’est ton anniversaire et le
mien, si tu dois faire quelque chose pour notre frère François, c’est le jour,
fais-le ». Puis avec Sœur Rozalia, nous nous éclipsons. Je m’entends encore lui
dire que ça n’irait pas bien loin.
C. A. – La porte de
la chambre se referme, je suis assise à côté de François quand il ouvre les
yeux et me demande : « Que m’est-il arrivé ? » Ce sont ses premiers mots
cohérents depuis des semaines, mais je ne réalise pas. J’ai l’image d’un voile
qui se déchire. C’est tout. Le lendemain, je contacte deux sociétés de pompes funèbres.
B. B. – Le lendemain
à midi, le téléphone sonne. « Père Bernard ! Père Bernard ! C’est un
miracle ! » Au bout du fil, Sœur Rozalia est très excitée. En allant porter la
communion à François, elle trouve le lit vide. Elle croit à un décès survenu
pendant la nuit. Une infirmière la détrompe : il se douche…
F. A. – Du sacrement
des malades, je ne me rappelle rien. Je me souviens vaguement avoir demandé ce
qui m’arrivait avant de replonger. Je ne réalise pas que je suis guéri. La nuit
suivante, en revanche, en essayant de me lever à trois reprises, je découvre
que je ne tiens plus debout. Les jours suivants sont terribles quand je
comprends où je suis. Une psychologue me prépare à mourir. À aucun moment on ne
pense au miracle.
À partir de quand
avez-vous cru au miracle ?
C. A. – J’ai vu mon
mari sortir du tombeau comme Lazare. Ses bandelettes ont mis des mois à tomber.
Après la guérison du syndrome myélo-prolifératif, François a souffert de graves
séquelles oculaires, pulmonaires, rénales et dermatologiques. Durant des mois,
le Malin se déchaîne. Il fait tout pour brouiller la manifestation de la
guérison. Pourtant, en janvier 2013, « il n’y a plus rien du tout ». L’équipe
médicale du service d’hématologie clinique qui suit François depuis douze ans
constate qu’il est guéri. Le cancer a disparu. Cette rémission totale fait dire
au médecin chef : « Cas spectaculaire, voire miraculeux ». Ce jour-là, nous
savons que le Seigneur a totalement guéri François.
Comment les faits
sont-ils arrivés jusqu’à Rome ?
B. B. – Pour un
miracle, la guérison doit être totale et immédiate, mais elle doit aussi se
vérifier dans la durée. Nous sommes longtemps restés discrets. Lorsque la
rémission médicalement inexplicable a été attestée par plusieurs médecins, nous
avons été reçus par Mgr Michel Santier, notre évêque, informé à son tour.
Lui-même avait confié sa mission et son diocèse au bienheureux Popieluszko lors
d’un pèlerinage en Pologne un an plus tôt ! Ensuite, nous rencontrons le
postulateur, Mgr Tomasz Kaczmarek. Avéré par une commission diocésaine, le
miracle est retenu en mai 2014 par la Congrégation pour la cause des saints.
Père Brien, que vous
inspirent tous ces événements ?
B. B. – Dieu n’en
finit pas de montrer avec quelle miséricorde Il relève ceux qui tombent. J’ai
passé quarante ans sans fréquenter l’Église. Ce désert a duré de 16 à 56 ans.
Un an après la conversion radicale qui m’a ramené au Seigneur, j’ai entendu
l’appel au sacerdoce. C’était pendant une adoration. J’ai été ordonné à 65 ans.
À mon avis, « ses décisions sont insondables et ses chemins impénétrables »
(saint Paul).
François, comment
vivez-vous cette intervention extraordinaire ?
F. A. – Je me sens
tout petit devant une si grande grâce. Pourquoi moi ? Je suis habité par le
syndrome du survivant. Je suis sidéré. Que me dis-Tu, Seigneur ? Comment rendre
ce que j’ai reçu ?
Vous rendez témoignage au
corps et au sang du Christ.
F. A. – J’ai
toujours eu soif de l’eucharistie.
C. A. – À chaque
hospitalisation, François a reçu l’eucharistie tous les jours et même en
chambre stérile. Quelle grâce ! Douze ans plus tôt, quand nous avons découvert
la leucémie de François, je me souviens avoir reçu une image intérieure.
C’était au cours d’une messe, juste après avoir communié. Cette vision a été
notre force depuis. J’ai vu une veine dans laquelle coulait le sang de
François, chargé de son cancer, à l’extrémité, une hostie filtrait ce sang
malade. J’étais assurée que le corps du Christ serait force et salut pour nous.
Que retenez-vous du Père
Jerzy ?
C. A. – Sans se
lasser, il a proclamé que c’est par le bien qu’on peut vaincre le mal. J’aime
ses phrases : « Quel que soit ton métier, tu es un homme » ; « L’école ne peut
pas détruire les valeurs que la famille a semées dans l'âme des enfants » ;
« La sainteté est notre vocation et notre devoir ».
F. A. – Sa santé
précaire. Il avait une peur bleue du cancer du sang !
B. B. – Il est un
exemple de grande sensibilité envers les personnes souffrantes, déprimées,
perdues. Mgr Tomasz Kaczmarek rappelle aussi qu’il a été « un apôtre
inépuisable et un dispensateur de sacrement de la pénitence ». Ça me touche,
moi qui ai été ordonné le dimanche de la Divine Miséricorde.
.jpg)
Le bienheureux Père
Popieluszko
Béatifié en 2010, le
bienheureux Jerzy Popieluszko est désormais en lice pour la canonisation. Pour
être porté sur les autels, la reconnaissance d’un miracle suffit. C’est à quoi
travaille une commission annoncée et constituée, le 20 septembre, par Mgr
Michel Santier, évêque de Créteil. C’est en effet dans le Val-de-Marne qu’a eu
lieu le miracle retenu pour plaider le procès en canonisation du bienheureux
martyr polonais. Reste maintenant à prouver l’authenticité du miracle présumé.
Un tribunal constitué de
deux notaires, d’un promoteur de justice, d’experts médecins, d’un délégué
épiscopal et d’un président, s’y attelle. Depuis sa création, cette commission
d’enquête a déjà procédé à l’audition d’une partie des témoins du miracle. La
seconde audition se tiendra en décembre. En sus, deux médecins neutres
examineront François Audelan et tous les certificats médicaux fournis.
S’ensuivra un long travail de traduction en polonais, latin et italien des
pièces réunies. Après quoi, le dossier sera envoyé au postulateur, Mgr Tomasz
Kaczmarek, qui le transmettra à la Congrégation pour la cause des saints, à
Rome. Il faudra alors attendre que le pape François signe le décret. La
canonisation du bienheureux Popieluszko fait partie des événements très
attendus avec à l’horizon, également, les prochaines Journées mondiales de la
jeunesse prévues à Cracovie en 2016.
M. M.
Pomnik
Jerzego Popiełuszki w parku miejskim im. Ks. Jerzego Popiełuszki przy ul. Pl.
Kościuszki w Suchowoli, gmina Suchowola, podlaskie
Jerzy
Popiełuszko monument in Jerzy Popiełuszko town park by Pl. Kościuszki street in
Suchowola, gmina Suchowola, podlaskie, Poland
Jerzy Popieluszko
LE 19 OCTOBRE 1984 …..IL
Y A 25 ANS
"Mon cri était celui
de ma patrie"
Jerzy Popieluszko a eu le
courage de défendre les idéaux de vérité, de liberté et de justice".
"L'aumônier
charismatique de Solidarnosc a payé le prix suprême pour être resté fidèle à sa
vocation.
Il symbolise la grandeur
et la sainteté de l'homme, les valeurs que nous devons défendre toujours et
partout si nous voulons vivre dans un État libre et démocratique",
Le Père Jerzy
Popieluszko, actif défenseur du Syndicat Solidarité, est mort martyrisé le 19
octobre 1984, à l’âge de 37 ans, sous les coups de la police politique
polonaise. Jeune prêtre de Varsovie nommé aumônier des aciéries de Huta
Warszawa par le Cardinal Wyszynski, Il était alors un des jeunes prêtres
polonais les plus populaires. Les hommes de la police polonaise ont cherché à
enlever secrètement le Père Poieluszko, afin de le faire disparaître
mystérieusement. Ils espéraient pouvoir continuer leur macabre besogne sur
d’autres prêtres défenseurs de Solidarité, afin de créer un climat de terreur
en Pologne, dans la tradition des meilleures heures du stalinisme. Leur but
était de faire plier à la fois l’Église et le peuple polonais, dans un contexte
mêlé d’incertitude et d’angoisse. Mais en échappant à leurs mains, un homme à
réussi à casser la machine infernale des agents du terrorisme d’État. Cet homme
là était Waldemar Chrotowski, le chauffeur et l’ami du Père Popieluszko. Enlevé
en même temps que le Prêtre, il est parvenu à sauter en marche de la voiture
des policiers
Jerzy Popieluszko est né
le 14 Septembre 1947 à Okopy près de Suchowola en Podlasie. (nord-est de la
Pologne) Ses parents, Marianne et Ladislas, dirigeaient une exploitation
agricole.
A partir de 1961, Jerzy
étudie au Lycée à Suchowola. À l'école, les enseignants le définissent comme un
élève moyen, capable, mais ambitieux. Un individualiste. Dès son plus jeune âge
il est enfant de chœur. Cela dit, la vocation à la prêtrise, lui vint qu’a la
période du baccalauréat. Après son diplôme en 1965, il rejoint le Grand
Séminaire de Varsovie.
Au début de sa seconde
année d’étude, il est mobilisé dans l'armée.
Les années 1966 - 68 ont
étés consacrées au service militaire dans une unité spéciale pour les
séminaristes à Bartoszyce (Warminsko-mazurskie) Rappelons que le recrutement
des séminaristes dans l'armée (en dépit d'un accord entre l'État et l'Église en
1950) était une manière pour les autorités communistes de soustraire les jeunes
séminaristes de l’environnement des évêques récalcitrants de l'Église. Il était
prévu que par un astucieux système d'endoctrinement effectué par un personnel sélectionné,
et des officiers capables de persuader les séminaristes d’abandonner leurs
études cléricales .Jerzy Popieluszko fut un soldat distingué, d'un grand
courage défendant ses convictions, ce qui la conduit à subir diverses formes de
persécution.
En revenant de l'armée
Jerzy tomba malade. A partir de ce moment jusqu'à la fin de vie il aura à faire
face a des problèmes de santé.
Le 28 Mai, 1972, il est
ordonné, prêtre des mains du cardinal Stefan Wyszynski Primat de Pologne.
Les images distribuées
lors de sa première messe comportent la phrase suivante : «Dieu m'envoie, pour
prêcher l'Évangile et à panser les plaies des cœurs blessés."
Jerzy a vécu son
sacerdoce dans les paroisses suivantes : l'église St. Trinity Zabkach ; p.w.
Notre-Dame Reine de la Pologne à Aninie et p.w. L'enfant Jésus à Zoliborzu. Il
avait dans son ministère pastoral un penchant pour le travail avec les enfants
et les jeunes. Malheureusement, les problèmes de santé s'aggravent. En Janvier
1979, Jerzy s'évanouit pendant la célébration de la Messe Après quelques
semaines de séjour à l'hôpital il ne retourne pas son travail régulier de
vicaire
Pendant l'année scolaire
1979/80, il a officié à l’aumônerie de l'église universitaire. Sainte Anne. Il
organisé un séminaire pour les étudiants en médecine.
Fin 1978, il a été nommé
pasteur de l'équipe médicale. Depuis lors, chaque mois, il a célébré la messe à
la chapelle Saint Res Sacra Miser.
A partir du 20 Mai 1980,
il est à la paroisse St. Stanislas Kostka. En tant que responsable du ministère
du personnel médical, depuis août 1980 il s’est engagé dans des activités
pastorales auprès des travailleurs.
C’est en août 1980 que le
Cardinal Wyszynski, , lui a demandé d’être l’aumônier des aciéries de la
capitale. C’est ainsi que le jeune abbé Popieluszko est devenu un ardent
défenseur de l’idéal du syndicat de Solidarité, né à la même époque, lors des «
accords de Gdansk »
À. 10h00, chaque
dimanche, il a célébré la sainte messe pour eux. Il s'est entretenu avec eux
régulièrement, tous les mois. Il a organisé une sorte de «laboratoire» pour les
travailleurs. Il a dirigé leur catéchèse, mais aussi à travers une série de
conférences il veut les aider à acquérir des connaissances dans divers domaines
- l'histoire de la Pologne et de la littérature, de la doctrine sociale de
l'Église, droit, économie, et même les techniques de négociation En Octobre
1981, il fut nommé aumônier diocésain pour la santé et aumônier auprès de la
maison de santé des employés des services de santé dans la rue Elekcyjnej 37.
Chaque semaine, la messe sera célébrée. dans la chapelle, qu’il a en partie
aménagée
Après le coup d’État du
13 décembre 1981, il avait pris la défense du syndicat Solidarité, mis
brutalement hors-la-loi.
Tous les mois, depuis
cette date fatidique, le Père Popieluszko célébrait une « messe pour la patrie
» dans sa paroisse St Stanislas-Kotska, dans la banlieue de Varsovie. Il y
prononçait de vibrantes homélies pour la justice sociale et le respect de la
liberté de l’homme. Le texte de ses allocutions courageuses était enregistré
par de nombreux militants sociaux chrétiens de Solidarité, et diffusé par
cassettes à travers toute la Pologne. Autant dire que le jeune prêtre était
considéré comme un dangereux agitateur par les séides du régime communiste
polonais,
A l’automne 1983, une
liste de 69 « prêtres extrémistes » a été établie par le gouvernement du
Général Jaruzelski et remise au Cardinal Glemp, successeur de l’intrépide Mgr
Wyszynski. Prière était faite au nouveau Primat de Pologne de faire taire ces
gêneurs en soutane. Le Père Popielszko figurait en bonne place sur cette liste,
en compagnie, il est vrai, de deux évêques, Mgr Tokarczuk et Mgr Kraszewski,
auxiliaire de Varsovie, et du confesseur de Lech Walesa, l’ineffable Père
Jankowski.
Dès les 12 et 13 décembre
1983, l’Abbé Popieluszko a été placé en garde à vue pendant deux jours. La
police prétendait avoir découvert chez lui des armes et des explosifs, ainsi
que des tracts de Solidarité. Au cours de la nuit suivant sa garde a vue , il
échappa de justesse à un attentat, une grenade ayant explosé dans son vestibule
après qu’un inconnu eut sonné à sa porte. Accusé d’ « abus de sacerdoce », le
jeune prêtre fut convoqué treize fois par la milice, dans les quatre premiers
mois de l’année 1984. Le porte-parole du gouvernement communiste, Jerzy Urban,
aujourd’hui reconverti dans la presse pornographique et anticléricale,
qualifiait Jerzy Popieluszjo de « fanatique politique ». Le vendredi 19
octobre à 22 heures, trois officiers de police arrêtèrent la voiture du Père
Popieluszko en rase campagne, sous prétexte d’un contrôle d’alcooltest. Alors
que son chauffeur parvint à s’enfuir, le prêtre martyr resta entre leurs mains.
Pendant plusieurs jours,
aucune nouvelle ne fut donnée sur le sort du père Popieluszko, jusqu’à ce que
le 27 octobre, le capitaine Grzegorz Piotrowski déclare : « C’est moi
qui l’ai tué, de mes propres mains ».
Le corps de l’aumônier
fut retrouvé dans un lac artificiel formé par le barrage de Wloclawek, sur la
Wisla à une centaine de kilomètres au nord de Varsovie. La nouvelle eut un
impact impressionnant mais le peuple polonais y fit face sans céder à la colère
ou à la violence, se souvenant des paroles que le père Jerzy aimait
répéter : « Nous devons vaincre le mal par le bien ».
Le père Jerzy a
certainement pardonné à ses assassins et il aurait sans doute voulu qu’on ne
parle pas trop du procès de Torun, mais sachez simplement que ceux qui
ordonnèrent ce crime, raconté dans les moindres détails par les assassins, au
cours d’un procès dramatique, ne furent jamais jugés. Les accusés furent
condamnés, mais leur peine fut ensuite réduite. Tous sont déjà sortis depuis
bien longtemps de prison.
La tombe du père
Popieluszko, située à Varsovie près de l’église où il célébrait les messes pour
la patrie, est devenue un lieu de pèlerinage où se sont déjà rendues des
millions de personnes qui le vénèrent comme témoin de la résistance morale et
spirituelle du peuple polonais.
Le Martyre du Père
Popieluszko a entraîné de nombreuses conversions, et même l’éclosion de
vocations sacerdotales. Il a soudé davantage encore l’Église de Pologne et les
militants de Solidarités. Aux yeux de l’Église Universelle, il revêt la valeur
d’un témoignage suprême contre l’oppression du totalitarisme athée.
Le 31 octobre 1982, le
Père Pupieluszko déclarait : Pour rester un être libre intérieurement, il
faut vivre dans la vérité. La vie dans la vérité, c'est de témoigner autour de
soi, de reconnaître la vérité, la réclamer dans chaque situation. Nous ne
sommes pas directement persécutés, nous ne sommes pas menacés de mort.
Sommes-nous libres pour autant ? Le chemin de la liberté s'ouvre devant
celui qui témoigne avec courage, disait le Père Popieluszko. Il nous en faut,
du courage, pour témoigner de la vérité sur l'homme et sur la vie. La vérité ne
change pas, on ne peut pas la détruire par des décisions ou des lois. Deux ans
avant sa mort, il terminait ainsi un de ses sermons : Nous prions Dieu de nous
donner l'espérance, car seulement ceux qui sont forts par l'espérance sont
capables de surmonter toutes les difficultés.
Ryszard©
Gazet@ Beskid
Création et
réalisation Stéphane
Delrieu
SOURCE : http://www.beskid.com/popieluszko.html
Funeral
of Jerzy Popiełuszko at Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church in Warsaw
Pogrzeb
księdza Jerzego Popiełuszki na terenie kościoła
św. Stanisława Kostki w Warszawie
Funeral
of Jerzy Popiełuszko at Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church in Warsaw, 3
November 1984
Pogrzeb
księdza Jerzego Popiełuszki na terenie kościoła
św. Stanisława Kostki w Warszawie
Funeral
of Jerzy Popiełuszko at Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church in Warsaw
Pogrzeb
księdza Jerzego Popiełuszki na terenie kościoła
św. Stanisława Kostki w Warszawie
.jpg)
Celebration
of memory of Jerzy Popiełuszko – altair
Bx Jerzy Popiełuszko
Prêtre et martyr
Jerzy Aleksander (au
baptême : Alfons) Popiełuszko naît le 14 septembre 1947 à Okopy, un petit
village de Voïvodine, au nord-est de Białystok (Pologne), au sein d’une famille
de paysans profondément chrétienne.
Entré au grand séminaire
de Varsovie en 1965, il a été appelé, un an plus tard, sous les drapeaux, pour
faire ses trois années de service militaire dans une unité spéciale. Les
autorités militaires procédaient à un endoctrinement anticlérical et
antireligieux pour détourner les séminaristes de leur vocation. Il fut l'objet
de vexations et de persécutions qui portèrent atteinte à sa santé.
Jerzy Popiełuszko fut
ordonné prêtre le 28 mai 1972 par le cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, primat de
Pologne, et choisit pour devise sacerdotale les paroles du prophète Isaïe et de
l'Évangile de Luc : « Il m'a envoyé porter la Bonne Nouvelle aux pauvres,
panser les plaies des cœurs brisés ».
Il exerça ses fonctions
pastorales en tant que vicaire de paroisses à Ząbki, à proximité de Varsovie,
puis à Anin, et enfin à Varsovie même, à la paroisse de l'Enfant Jésus.
En 1979-1980, il assura
la catéchèse des étudiants en médecine à l'église académique Sainte-Anne à
Varsovie. Il fut également nommé membre du Corps consultatif national pour la pastorale
du service de santé et aumônier diocésain du personnel de santé.
Dès mai 1980, il exerça
son ministère dans la paroisse Saint-Stanislas-Kostka à Varsovie.
En août 1980, pendant la
grève de Solidarność aux aciéries de Varsovie, le père Jerzy Popiełuszko
devient, à la demande des sidérurgistes et par nomination du primat Wyszyński,
aumônier des ouvriers. Il s'engage profondément dans la pastorale des
travailleurs et accompagne le syndicat Solidarność pendant l'état de guerre.
Après le coup de force du
général Wojciech Jaruzelski contre Solidarność en décembre 1981, le père
Popieluszko s'était mis à célébrer des « Messes pour la patrie », où
les homélies affrontaient des thèmes religieux et spirituels mais aussi des
questions d'actualité, à caractère social, politique et moral. Ces messes
regroupent des milliers de fidèles venant de Varsovie et de différentes régions
de Pologne, suscitant la fureur du pouvoir communiste.
Considéré comme «
dangereux », Jerzy Popiełuszko fut enlevé par trois officiers de la police
politique (SB) le 19 octobre 1984, alors qu'il revient en voiture de son
service pastoral. Après avoir été torturé jusqu'à ce que mort s'ensuive, le
corps est lesté puis jeté dans un réservoir d'eau de la Vistule (à 120 km au
nord de Varsovie). Son corps méconnaissable ne sera découvert, par des
plongeurs, que plusieurs jours plus tard dans ce réservoir, grâce aux aveux des
trois officiers. Ses funérailles, auxquelles participèrent plus de 1.000
prêtres et des centaines de milliers de fidèles, furent célébrées le 3 novembre
1984 à Varsovie.
Le père Popiełuszko
symbolise, aux yeux des Polonais, la lutte commune de l'opposition démocratique
et de l'Église catholique contre un régime totalitaire.
Jerzy Popiełuszko à
été béatifié le 6 juin 2010 par le card. Angelo Amato s.d.b., Préfet de la
Congrégation pour la cause des Saints, qui représentait le pape Benoît XVI.
La célébration, qui a eu
lieu en Pologne, à Varsovie, sur la place du Maréchal Józef Pilsudski,
réunissait des fidèles venus de tout le pays, les membres du syndicat «
Solidarność », les autorités civiles et militaires, les prêtres, les personnes
consacrées, la mère du bienheureux, Marianna Popiełuszko, et la famille du
prêtre martyr.
SOURCE : https://levangileauquotidien.org/FR/display-saint/a4d34830-d504-456c-bf40-976a2df114d0
.jpg)
Jerzy Popiełuszko - zdjęcie z Europeany
i Cyfrowego Archiwum Pamiątek
Profile
Born to a farm family. Ordained on 28 May 1972 in
the archdiocese of Warsaw, Poland.
Noted and vocal anti-Communist preacher during
the period of Communist rule
in Poland.
Worked closely with the anti-Communist Solidarity
union movement. When martial law was declared in Poland to
suppress opposition, the Church continued
to work against the Communists,
and Father Jerzy’s
sermons were broadcast on Radio Free Europe. The secret police threatened and
pressured him to stop, but he ignored them. They trumped up evidence and arrested him
in 1983,
but the Church hierarchy
indicated that they would fight the charges; the false charges were
dropped, Father Jerzy
was released, continued his work, and was pardoned in a general amnesty
of 22
July 1984.
The Communists tried
several times to kill him and make it look like an accident or anonymous
attack, but they quit hiding their intentions, and the secret police simply
kidnapped and killed Father Jerzy. Martyr.
Born
14
September 1947 in
Okopy, Podlaskie, Poland
kidnapped on 19
October 1984 by
the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa (Security Service of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs), the Communist Polish secret
police
beaten
to death from 19 to 20
October 1984 near
Wloclawek, Pomorskie, Poland
body dumped in the
Vistula Water Reservoir where it was found on 30
October 1984
the murderers and their
supervisor, Grzegorz Piotrowski, Waldemar Chmielewski, Adam Pietruszka, and
Leszek Pêkala, were arrested, convicted of the crime, and received light
sentences
more than 250,000
attended Father Jerzy’s
funeral
buried at
Saint Kostka’s Church, Warsaw, Poland
the rock that struck
the killing blow
is enshrined at
Saint Bartholomew’s Basilica, Tiber Island, Rome, Italy
19
December 2009 by Pope Benedict
XVI (decree of martyrdom)
6 June 2010 by Pope Benedict
XVI
recognition to be
celebrated at Piłsudski Square, Warsaw, Poland,
presided by Archbishop Angelo
Amato
Additional
Information
books
Zenit: Process Begins to Recognize Miracle Attributed to
Prayer of Blessed Jerzy
images
video
fonti
in italiano
Dicastero delle Cause dei Santi
strony
w jezyku polskim
Parafia p. w. Sw.
Stanislawa Kostki w Warszawie
MLA
Citation
“Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko“. CatholicSaints.Info.
10 July 2023. Web. 23 November 2024.
<https://catholicsaints.info/blessed-jerzy-popieluszko/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/blessed-jerzy-popieluszko/
.jpg)
Jerzy Popiełuszko in Gdańsk
http://fbc.pionier.net.pl/zbiorki/dlibra/docmetadata?id=25.
Andrzej Iwański
Polish priest, martyr and
hero: Remembering Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko
by Mary
Farrow
Warsaw, Poland, Oct 19,
2018 / 04:42 pm MT (CNA).-
When Communist officials kidnapped and killed Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, they
likely did not intend to help create a Polish hero, martyr and future saint for
the Catholic Church.
Although the Communists
had been trying to kill Popiełuszko in ways that would seem like an accident,
they captured him 34 years ago today, on Oct. 19, 1984. They beat him to death
and threw his body into a river. He was 37 years old.
His crimes: encouraging
peaceful resistance to Communism via the radio waves of Radio Free Europe, and
working as chaplain to the workers of the Solidarność (Solidarity) movement and
trade union, which was known for its opposition to Communism.
Popiełuszko was born on
Sept. 14, 1947 to a farming family in Okopy, a village in eastern Poland
bordering modern-day Ukraine. While World War II had ended, the regime of the
Communist Party had taken place of the Nazis and ruled Poland at the time.
As a young man,
Popiełuszko served his required time in the army before completing seminary
studies and becoming a priest for the Archdiocese of Warsaw. He was ordained on
May 28, 1972 at the age of 24.
As a priest in Warsaw,
Popiełuszko served in both regular and student parishes. He became known for
his steadfast, non-violent resistance to Communism, about which he spoke
frequently in his homilies, which were broadcast on Radio Free Europe.
Popiełuszko participated
in the Solidarity worker’s strike in Warsaw on March 27, 1981, a four-hour
national warning strike that essentially ground Poland to a halt, and was the
biggest strike in the history of the Soviet Bloc and in the history of Poland.
After this strikes, the
Communist party declared martial law until July 1983 in the country, severely
restricting the daily life of Poles in an effort to clamp down on their growing
political opposition.
During this time,
Popiełuszko celebrated monthly “Masses for the Homeland” on the last Sunday of
the month, advocating for human rights and peaceful resistance of Communism,
and attracting thousands of attendees. His Warsaw office had also become an
official hub for Solidarity activities.
It was also during this
time that Communist attacks against the priest escalated. In 1982, Communist
authorities attempted to bomb the priest’s home, but he escaped unharmed. In
1983, Popiełuszko was arrested on false charges by the Communist authorities,
but was released shortly thereafter following significant pressure from the
Polish people and the Catholic Church.
According to a 1990
article in the Washington Post, Cardinal Józef Glemp, Archbishop of Warsaw
at the time, received a secret message from the Polish Pope John Paul II,
demanding that Glemp defend Popiełuszko and advocate for his release.
"Defend Father Jerzy
- or they'll start finding weapons in the desk of every second bishop,"
the pope wrote.
But the Communist
officials did not relent. According to court testimony, in September 1984
Communist officials had decided that the priest needed to either be pushed from
a train, have a “beautiful traffic accident” or be tortured to death.
On October 13, 1984,
Popiełuszko managed to avoid a traffic accident set up to kill him. The back-up
plan, capture and torture, was carried out by Communist authorities on Oct. 19.
They lured the priest to them by pretending that their car had broken down on a
road along which the priest was travelling.
The captors reportedly
beat the priest with a rock until he died, and then tied his mangled body to
rocks and bags of sand and dumped it in a reservoir along the Vistula River.
His body was recovered on
Oct. 30, 1984.
His death grieved and
enraged Catholics and members of the Solidarity movement, who had hoped to
accomplish social change without violence.
“When the news was
announced at his parish church, his congregation was silent for a moment and
then began shrieking and weeping with grief,” the
BBC wrote of the priest’s death.
“The worst has happened.
Someone wanted to kill and he killed not only a man, not a Pole, not only a
priest. Someone wanted to kill the hope that it is possible to avoid violence
in Polish political life,” Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, a friend of
Popiełuszko, said at the time.
He also urged mourners to
remain calm and peaceful during the priest’s funeral, which drew more than a
quarter of a million people.
Again facing pressure
from the Church and the Polish people, Poland's president Gen. Wojciech
Jaruzelski was forced to answer for the priest’s death, and arrested Captain
Grzegorz Piotrowski, Leszek Pękala, Waldemar Chmielewski and Colonel Adam
Pietruszka as responsible for the murder.
“Our intelligence sources
in Poland do not believe it,” the Washington Post reported in 1990, when the
case was being revisited.
“Jaruzelski had presided
over a far-reaching anti-church campaign. At least two other priests died
mysteriously. And Jaruzelski created the climate that allowed the SB (Communist
secret service) to persecute and kill Father Jerzy.”
In 2009, Popiełuszko was
posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the highest civilian or
military decoration in Poland. That same year, he was declared a martyr of the
Catholic Church by Pope Benedict XVI, and on June 6, 2010 he was beatified. A
miracle in France through the intercession of Popiełuszko is being investigated
in France as the final step in his cause for canonization.
Popiełuszko is one of
more than 3,000 priests martyred in Poland under the Nazi and Communist regimes
which dominated the country from 1939-1989.
On Friday, Archbishop Stanisław Budzik of Poland and the Polish bishops’ conference released a statement honoring the memory of Father Popiełuszko and all the 20th century priest martyrs of Poland.
“Today, remembering Fr.
Jerzy Popiełuszko, we remember the unswerving priests who preached the Gospel,
served God and people in the most terrible times and had the courage not only
to suffer for the faith but to give what is most dear to men: their lives.”
Church of the Transfiguration in Sanok
stained glass window Jerzy Popiełuszko founded by Adam Sudoł
Kościół Przemienienia Pańskiego w
Sanoku. Witraż - ks. Jerzy Popiełuszko ufundowany przez ks. Adama Sudoła w 1994
The Touching Story of
Blessed Father Jerzy Popieluszko
MAR 1,
2019 ELEONORE VILLARRUBIA
This beloved and
unassuming young priest of Poland was a true hero of that tortured land during
the Soviet Communist occupation. Now a Blessed, Father Jerzy (pronounced
YEH-Zhe) was beloved by everyone in his homeland, believers and non-believers
alike, because of his bravery in the face of extreme hatred on the part of the
Communist officials. His story should be much more widely known than it is.
Never in good health, the
strongest part of Father Jerzy were his hands. His most beloved possessions
were the crucifix and Rosary sent to him by Pope John Paul II, a fellow
countryman. He was sickly his whole life, yet he never complained of illness or
injury. One day when he was making toys with his brothers and sisters, a nail
pierced his palm. Later, one of the children noticed blood dripping from his
hand. One of his siblings told the parents because young Jerzy did not want to
bother anyone.
Young Jerzy’s great hero
was Saint Maximillian Kolbe, another Polish priest who gave his life to save
another prisoner – a man with a family – at Auschwitz. He determined early on
to become a priest, but kept it a secret so that the authorities could not
alter his examination results or pressure the family to keep him out of the
seminary.
In 1966, his entire
seminary class was drafted into the special indoctrination unit in violation of
a church-state agreement. This cruel treatment was reserved for the most
outspoken church leaders, including the future Pope John Paul II.
The horrible treatment he
received in this “special unit” broke his health, but not his spirit. He wrote
to his father “It turned out to be very tough, but I can’t be broken by threats
or torture.” His seminary professors demanded that he take a period of rest,
but he refused. “One doesn’t suffer when one suffers for Christ,” was his
reply.
He became so weak that he
suffered recurring fainting spells. A fellow priest found him lying in a dead
faint at the foot of the altar, unconscious. After he endured another long
hospital stay, it was discovered that Father Jerzy suffered from a serious
blood disorder. He would need transfusions after each recurrence of the
illness. He was placed on a special diet. His doctors hoped that a quiet life
would prevent further episodes. He planned to rest and spend more time with his
beloved seminary students when the call came that would give him no rest for
the remainder of his life. His new position as chaplain to factory workers
“gave him wings,” and changed the course of his life. He worked tirelessly to
learn how to operate machinery, but more importantly, he grew to love the
workers and they grew to love him. He tore down barriers between himself and
the worker; there were many baptisms and weddings. All this brought him much
joy.
In the meantime, He was
shadowed relentlessly by the secret police, receiving death threats and urged
to break contact with his beloved workers. “Truth that costs nothing is a lie,”
became his motto.
In autumn of 1981, Father
Jerzy came to the United States to attend the funeral of a beloved aunt. Like
many Poles, he loved America and his many friends tried to convince him to stay
and take political asylum. He knew that his people would be in danger if did
that: “They need me and I need them.” So, as soon as the funeral was over, he
flew back to Warsaw.
The communist regime
declared a “state of war” against the Polish people on Dec 13, 1981 and, after
attacks by security forces on factories and demonstrators, the Solidarity
movement was forced underground. Solidarity was the first independent labor
union founded within the Soviet bloc. It had over nine million members. Those
workers who escaped arrest turned up at Father Jerzy’s apartment as soon as
martial law was declared. “It was reflex,” said one worker — “when in trouble,
see Jerzy.”
They came because they
knew he was not afraid. On one wall of his apartment was a huge map of Poland
marking every prison camp; next to it was a makeshift crucifix. When asked if
he was afraid to have such a thing on his wall, he answered, “It
is they who are afraid.” For Father Jerzy, his calling could be
summed up in a verse from Saint Luke that he had chosen when he was ordained.
It read, “To let the oppressed go free.”
The Polish people who had
heard of Father Jerzy came from near and far to help those oppressed by the
communists. People came from distant parishes and from abroad to give him aid.
While his own garments and shoes rotted away, he cared only to provide for the
needy, both Catholics and unbelievers. In return for their generosity, the
secret police persecuted his workers and students. They followed him wherever
he traveled. His apartment and car were electronically bugged so that the
secret police knew his location at all times.
Martial law had silenced
millions of Poles, but Father Jerzy was not afraid to speak out. He began to
hold special “Masses for the Homeland” as Christmas (the celebration of which
was forbidden) approached. Many of the miners from southern Poland were so
moved by the strength and confidence of his soft voice that they proclaimed
that it was the most powerful they had ever heard. Father said openly what they
really felt, but could not say. They would rise again after any humiliation,
“for you have knelt only before God.” The regime had banned the mere mention of
Solidarity, but Father declared, “Solidarity means remaning internally free,
even in conditions of slavery: overcoming the fear that grips you by your
throat.”
The “Mass for the
Homeland” grew into a national event, with people coming from all ver Poland to
attend. The most famous actors in Poland vied to take part in the readings.
Even at his Masses,
security forces forces circled the church as police tried to incite the
congregation. Father’s only words were “Overcome evil with good.” The priest
received hundreds of letters of thanks from Mass-goers, thanking him for
restoring their faith. There were many conversions, including ranking
communists who dared not go to anyone else. They knew that they could trust
this priest.
Thousands of paper copies
and audio cassettes were made of his preaching and spread across Poland. Church
officials had forbidden the spread of these materials; so Father had to open
his own underground print shop. His acclaim grew so great that even the Warsaw
police refused to take part in actions against him. Men from other parts of
Poland had to be brought in to do the dirty work.
As his Masses grew in
popularity, the greater became the threats and harassment. “The most they can
do is kill me,” he said. However, when the first attempt was made on his life,
he was shaken. He had just collapsed into bed at 2 AM on the first anniversary
of martial law, exhausted from preparing Christmas gifts for the children in
Warsaw’s hospitals, when the doorbell rang. Father was too tired to get up and
answer it. A moment later, a bomb crashed into the next room, blowing out the
windows where he would have been standing.
Father was astonished at
the hatred behind this attack. He had always thought that he would be exiled to
Siberia like generations of Polish priests before him. He had even kept
practicing his Russian so that he could “preach the good word in the camps.”
Now he confided to a friend that he began to feel real fear. But nothing would
separate him from his flock, because “there is a dimension beyond fear. Arrest,
torture, even death itself are not the end of the story.” After the initial
attempt on his life, brawny steel workers guarded him around the clock — “like
a treasure, like a brother’s brother,” said one of the men.
One day a steelworker
friend came to him in despair. Under threats of blackmail, he had signed a
document agreeing to become a police informer. If he would become an informer,
his friends and fellow workers would have nothing to do with him. If not, the
police would come for him. In order to help his friend, Father told the man he
would have to use his name. The man had no choice but to agree. When the
situation became public, the police did not pursue it.
Father’s boldness enraged
the authorities. Silencing him became a top priority. The priest’s movements
were being followed at the top level of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with
major decisions on the case taken by the minister himself. At special meetings
with church officials the regime demanded an end be put to Father Jerzy’s
activities. Hearing that arrest was imminent, Father’s parishioners blocked
police attempts to take him away for interrogation. Church officials reached
the agreement that Father would submit to at most an hour of questioning.
When the search party
arrived at the apartment, which was a gift from an American aunt, they “found”
grenades, explosives and ammunition, as well as leaflets calling for armed
uprisings. Of course, it was the police who planted these things so that Father
would spend the second anniversary of the uprising in jail.
Father’s friends knew
that he would not last long without his medications. The night in jail proved
to be profitable. He spent the night talking to a convicted murderer and by
dawn the man had confessed. Of course Father had no consecrated hosts on him;
so he blessed a piece of prison bread and told the man, “Next time, we shall
share a meal.”
The Cardinal-Primate of
Poland, Jozef Glemp, had never been fond of Father Jerzy’s activities. He
believed it was his first priority to preserve church-state “dialogue.” He
disapproved of Solidarity, interested only in his accommodating approach as the
only path to peace. For Father Jerzy, the only path to preach was respect for
human rights. Cardinal Glemp was ordered by party magistrates to silence
sixty-nine “anti-socialist” priests. It was obvious that the Cardinal
disapproved of Father’s activities. When the Polish Pope sent Father Jerzy a
crucifix and a rosary, Glemp changed his tune and praised the young priest as
an example for the Polish clergy.
John Paul II had great
admiration for the young priest for bringing together all parts of Polish
society in a bold moral challenge to communist power. Father Jerzy’s spirit
cheered the Pope and gave him hope for Poland’s eventual freedom from communist
yoke. Soviet authorities, worried about the increase in religious fervor in the
homeland, forbade the young priest and the Pope to meet with each other during
the Holy Father’s trip to Poland in 1983.
General Wojciech
Jaruzelski, the Polish puppet dictator, visited Moscow in May of 1984.
Increasingly sharp attacks on Father Jerzy and other “extremist” priests
appeared in the Polish press. Wherever he preached, death threats by phone and
letter grew more numerous and alarming. To cheer the young priest, Warsaw
students had given him a little black puppy which he promptly named “Tajniak” —
Polish for “secret agent” — because it followed him everywhere.
Thirteen interrogations
in the first six months of 1984 were staged to terrorize Father. His supporters
always accompanied their priest to secret police headquarters. They waited
outside, chanting hymns and prayers until the end of the ordeal. Inside, Father
sat with hands behind his back, fingering the rosary beads that the Pope had
sent him. He answered their questions as he always had — by reciting the rosary
again and again. Furious, the agents would finally release him.
With Moscow and Warsaw
turning up the heat, Father Jerzey finally lost the support of Cardinal Glemp.
At his May 1984 Mass for the Homeland, Father made the Primate furious. Eleven
top Solidarity leaders had just rejected a deal that representatives of the
Primate and the regime had pushed them to accept: release from prison if they
would drop their Solidarity activities. Father praised the prisoners’ courage
for not betraying their ideals. When people “support the mechanisms of evil
they become responsible for their own slavery.”
From that time on, the
Primate’s negotiators dealt directly with secret police officials over Father’s
silence. They reached an a greement with the authorities to muzzle him, but
could not enforce it. “If I shut up, it means they have won” he told an Italian
journalist. “To speak out is precisely my job.” When the Cardinal spoke
publicly, he hardly drew anyone. Conversely, whenever and wherever Father Jerzy
spoke, he drew the crowds.
In the summer of 1984,
Church and Solidarity officials learned of secret plans to kill one of three
leading “anti state” priests, including Father Jerzy. Several priests had
already been killed in suspicious “accidents” involving the secret police.
Father Jerzy’s own car had barely escaped a similar accident. A papal chaplain
had died in a mysterious car crash in 1982, and several other pro-Solidarity
clerics narrowly escaped a similar death. Polish Church officials chose to keep
these and other killings quiet rather than protest them.
The workers redoubled
their protection of Father Jerzy. State security cars circled the rectory and
his apartment no longer was open to the troubled and the needy. Father rarely
left the apartment now and avoided giving rides to friends, fearing that
officials had sabotaged his car. However, the Masses for the Homeland
continued. In the words of one worker, “We need it more than bread.” Father
responded to the calls for violence, “You conquer people with your open heart,
not with a closed fist.”
As he grew more and more
frail with each passing month, he continued to bring aid and good cheer to
Warsaw’s growing numbers of sick and poor. One woman was surprised to see
Father leaving her mother’s apartment after bringing her Holy Communion. The
daughter thought of him as a national celebrity, while the mother knew him only
as her parish priest who visited regularly.
The sick and worried
young priest hardly slept at all any more. Many nights he awoke in a sweat. He
tried to appear calm, but his foreboding was so strong that others felt it as
well. His old cheerfulness was gone, and his friends felt that he was near the
breaking point. After the usual prayers after one Mass, Father turned to the
congregation and stated, “Now I need your prayers.
The ring was closing
around our priest. He returned to his family village, expecting the worst. He
lingered in each corner of his family home as if saying good-bye. His mother
watched him walk the farm and fields of his childhood. He was accused of holding
“seances of hate” and “sessions of political rabies” in his church. One
government official added, “Even though there is no such thing as a human soul,
the struggle for power over it is real.”
The next day at secret
police headquarters, the officers in charge of his case excitedly discussed
their new orders: to go beyond the intimidation that had failed so far. He
could be pushed off a moving train or have a “beautiful traffic accident” on
the road. They could kidnap and torture him until he revealed the information
they sought. Or maybe his weak heart would give out. The orders to eliminate
him at any cost came from “the very top.”
By early October, Church
officials assured the regime that the “Popieluszko problem” would be taken care
of to their liking. The Primate’s increasingly harsh rebukes — for endangering
the interests of the Church and worse — left Father Jerzy shattered. Friends
recall seeing him sobbing uncontrollably just after had come from a meeting
with Cardinal Glemp.
The Pope watched events in
Warsaw with mounting alarm. He was afraid for Father Jerzy’s life. “One must
suffer for the truth, the priest had written. “That is why I am ready for
anything.” In lieu of Cardinal Glemp’s accommodation with the regime, the Pope
sent a special blessing and crucifix to Father Jerzy. In Rome, John Paul
demanded, “Why don’t they defend him!”
It was planned that
Father would be kidnapped outside of Warsaw because of his strong worker guards
there. The police tried to force him to travel alone. His traveling bodyguard,
Waldemar Chrostowski, was interrogated many times and presured to “cease their
friendship.” When he ignored the warnings his apartment was gutted by a
powerful firebomb. Even though Waldemar was a firefighter by profession,
authorities halted investigation of the incident.
On October 9, the order
was given that Father Jerzy was to be killed without fail, but first, security
agents should try to “extract” as much information from him as possible in a
wartime Nazi bunker in the forest. Any others traveling with him would also be
murdered.
On October 13, 1984,
Father and his bodyguard were returning from his last Mass for the Homeland”
along with a prominent Solidarity leader. Thanks to the bodyguard/chauffeur’s
quick reflexes, they eluded the secret police ambush. When the death squad
returned to headquarters, a superior remarked “What a pity — it could have been
a bigger accident with so many involved.”
Father Jerzy suddenly
felt that an unbearable burden had just been lifted from him. He knew the end
was near. A colleague remarked, “He went straight for what was coming to meet
him.”
A few nights later,
Father noticed that a secret police car had been stationed outside his window
for several hours in the icy cold. “They must be freezing,” he told Chrostowski,
and sent him down with a message”You ‘ve been on duty for so long – Father
Jerzy wants you to have a cup of coffee.” The officers looked annoyed and
turned away.
When he traveled, Father
like to dress casually, but this time he put on his priestly garments. As
always, he took along the rosary, his greatest treasure, given him by the Pope.
That evening he presided at a special Mass for the Working People at a small
town in the countryside. The topic of his sermon was “Overcome Evil with Good.”
Secret agents waited outside, wrapping their wooden clubs with rage. Father
spoke his last words to the congregation, “Most of all, may we be free from the
desire for violence and vengeance.”
Father wanted to be back
at his home parish for Mass the next morning. His friends had spotted a strange
Fiat waiting outside the church in the small town. In the car was the officer
in charge of the long-running investigation, one of the most brilliant and
trusted officers in the Polish secret police. With him were two other highly
decorated officers from the security service’s Fourth Department, responsible
for religious affairs. This was the same team that had tried to ambush the
priest six days before. These callous men had argued about selling the priest’s
car for spare parts.
Parishioners offered to
escort Father Jerzy by car back to Warsaw, but he was used to being followed
and it was late. He and his bodyguard would go alone. The secret police
overtook them on a deserted road about a half hour from the town. They held the
bodyguard at gunpoint. The captain dragged Father by the cassock to the Fiat.
“What are you doing, Gentleman? How can you treat someone like this?”
In a cold fury, the
kidnappers beat him with fists and clubs, smashing his skull and face.
Unconscious, he was bound, gagged and thrown into the trunk. As they headed for
a lonely stretch of woods, the bodyguard hurled himself from the Fiat in a
desperate attempt to escape. He made it to a nearby workers hostel and quickly
raised the alarm. When they reached the hospital emergency ward, another squad
of secret police and a state prosecutor were waiting to take him away. But for
the authorities it was too late. The bodyguard had already alerted the Church.
The secret police Fiat
sped on with Father Jerzy in the trunk The captain’s men were arguing now, and
downing quick shots of vodka. The kidnappers were so terrified that they would
be identified that they wanted to leave the priest in the woods. “No,” said
another angrily, “the priest must die.”
With the bodyguard’s
escape, news of the abduction had swept across Poland. Shock and outrage were
nationwide. The parish church overflowed with thousands of people. Every night,
larger crowds came to the Masses, praying for Father’s deliverance. Massive
security forces surrounded the Warsaw steelworks, where the men were praying at
work. Throughout Poland, there were mass meetings in factories and spontaneous
prayers in schools. The national crisis mounted. Other churchmen denounced the
kidnapping, but Cardinal Glemp refused to comment. The Holy Father declared
himself “deeply shaken,” condemning the shameful act and demanding Father
Jerzy’s immediate release.
After ten days of
waiting, the nation’s patience ran raw. Authorities dispatched large security
forces and imposed emergency measures in cities and towns. The last Sunday of
October, a record 50,000 people engulfed the parish church at a cold, outdoor
Mass for the Homeland. They listened to a tape of Father Jerzy’s last sermon.
They hoped and prayed to see him again.
When smiling security
officers pulled the battered corpse of Father Jerzy from a reservoir on the
river Vistula, about eighty miles from Warsaw, it was tortured beyone
recognition. A sack of rocks hung from his legs. His body had been trussed from
neck to feet with a nylon rope so that if he resisted he would strangle
himself. Several gags had worked free and lay across his clerical collar and
cassock, soaked with the priest’s vomit and blood.
Officially, Father spent
less than two hours with his kidnappers, but his torture was much too extensive
and systematic to have in inflicted in that brief time. Family members present
at the autopsy described a body covered head to foot with deep, bloody wounds
and marks of torture. His face was deformed. His eyes and forehead had been
beated until black. His jaws, nose, mouth were smashed. His face was deformed,
and both hands were broken and cut, as if the priest had been shielding it from
blows. His fingers and toes dark red and brown from the repeated clubbing. Part
of his scalp and large strips of skin on his legs had been torn off.
The autopsy showed a
brain concussion and damaged spinal cord. His muscles had been pounded again
and again until limp. Internal injuries from the beatings had left blood in his
lungs. One of the doctors that performed the post-mortem reported that in all
his medical practice he had never seen anyone mutilated internally. The kidneys
and intestines were reduced to pulp, as in others cases of prolonged police
torture in Poland. When his mouth was opened, the teeth were found completely
smashed. In place of his tongue, there was only mush.
A group of priests tried
to identify the body, but could not recognize their friend. Identification was
finally made by Father’s brother from a birthmark on the side of his chest.
Making the full autopsy report public was deemed too explosive by regime and
Church officials, who continue to suppress it. Church and independent sources
familiar with the report have said it details an even more horrifying picture
suffered by the defenseless priest.
“The worst has happened,”
declared Lech Walesa, Solidarity’s leader. In Rome, the Holy Father reacted
with shock, following the news late into the night. At the parish church in
Warsaw, a priest made several attempts to get the mourning population to say
the Our Father. When he reached “Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass
against us” the congregation refused to pray with him. It took several more
attempts before the people would utter that line, and when they did, they
prayed it with great force.
Just as was feared, when
the state trial was held for the perpetrators, only the mid-level criminals
were sentenced. Those who masterminded the plot got off scott-free. Because
they were afraid that Father Jerzey’s final resting place would become a shrine,
the state officials pressured his parents to bury him in their distant village.
The faithful demanded a huge funeral and that he be buried in the parish
cemetery. It was the pleading of Father’s mother that he be buried at the
parish church in Warsaw.
Father’s mother had
continued to wear a red shawl as long as she believed her son was alive. Now,
for the funeral, she wore her black shawl. On the day of the funeral ten
thousand steelworkers in hard hats marched past secret police headquarters,
chanting “We forgive,” “Greetings from the underground,” and “No freedom
without Solidarity.” Half a million people filled the streets leading up to the
parish church. Scattered throughout were the forbidden Solidarity banners of
factories, schools and offices from every corner of Poland. One read “A strike
at the heart of the nation,” another proclaimed, “But they can’t kill the
soul.”
Father Jerzy knew that
his death would have immense power. “Living I could not achieve it,” he once
said when the danger rose. The parish church, Saint Stanislaw’s has become a
national shrine. As of the writing of this piece by James Fox in 1985, and
unending river of pilgrims flow past Father’s grave. Great mounds of flowers
are put there. Even communists visited the grave. A thousand-man volunteer
force guards the church yard in teams around the clock.
The murder of the holy,
defenseless priest emboldened the populace and encourage many conversions and
vocations. All the while the regime continued to defame the priest.
Today, Poland, as the
rest of the former Iron Curtain countries of Europe, is a free country and a
proud ally of our own country. The enemies of Christ rule Europe no more.
***Author’s note: It was
by chance that I was looking for reading material when I happened upon this
Reader’s Digest of May, 1985. I could not sleep thinking that Father Jerzy’s
story must be made widely known. The title of the original article was “Do you
hear the Bells, Father Jerzy?” The author of the piece is John Fox.
Father Jerzy, may you
rest in peace.
Father Jerzy, pray for
us!
SOURCE : https://catholicism.org/the-touching-story-of-blessed-father-jerzy-popieluszko.html
Kapliczka
poświęcona pamięci męczeńskiej śmierci ks. Jerzego Popiełuszki
Process Begins to
Recognize Miracle Attributed to Prayer of Solidarnosc Chaplain
Blessed Father Jerzy
Popieluszko Believed to Have Acted on His Birthday to Cure Man With Leukemia
SEPTEMBER 19, 2014 00:00ZENIT STAFFARCHIVES
By Milena Kindziuk*
Francis, a 56-year-old
Frenchman, was about to die of an extremely malignant type of leukemia. Since
he was in his agony, his wife was already choosing the type of coffin and
organizing his funeral. However, a miracle happened, attributed to the
intercession of the martyr Father Jerzy Popielusko. And, thanks to this
miraculous healing, the process of canonization will begin Saturday at Creteil,
near Paris, of Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko, better known as the “chaplain of
Solidarnosc.”
Father and Professor
Jozef Naumowicz of the Catholic University of Warsaw, notary in the process of
Canonization, announced that he will hear the witnesses in France, and he
explained: “This means that the entire process will be carried out in the
French diocese and, subsequently, if the Vatican Congregation for Saints’ Causes,
after further and careful investigation, confirms this miracle, the Polish
priest-martyr will be declared a Saint.”
It all began in 2001,
when Francis got sick. The doctors diagnosed “chronic myeloid leukemia in
a-typical form” and from the beginning they gave him little possibilities of a
cure.
It was a shock for him –
he was still very young, had a good job, a loving wife and three adolescent
daughters. He wanted to live; he was being looked after by the best
haematologists and world-famous professors.
The illness did not
progress rapidly because he had long stays in hospitals, the help of
chemotherapy and the abundant use of medicine, but Francis was not being cured.
After 10 years of ever
stronger treatments, his body stopped completely. Francis fell into a coma. He
was taken to the palliative care unit where terminal patients are kept. The
doctors had no more hope; all the treatments were tried and the illness was not
arrested.
His wife watched over her
husband in coma. She arranged for Francis to receive the Sacrament of the
Anointing of the Sick (both are believers, formed spiritually in the “Chemin
Neuf” community). The doctors told his wife that her husband was about to die
and suggested that she take care of all the formalities connected with the funeral.
“I had chosen an oak
coffin –recounted his wife – because Francis liked oak wood. At home I began to
put his things in order, I tore to pieces the letters that I once wrote to him.
There will no longer be a possibility to read them – I thought – and at the
same time I felt peace within me. I did not weep, I did not let myself be
carried away by panic.”
Up to this point, it is a
story that is quite common, although tragic. Every day many people in different
parts of the world suffer and die. But for Francis it was a turnabout.
Something happened as if Someone from on high intervened to write a different
scenario.
The “personalities” of
this story live in France. The Polish Sister Rozalia Michalitka, who belongs to
the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Michael the Archangel, works in a
hospital of Creteil and is in charge of the pastoral care of the sick. She was
the one who brought Communion to Francis’ wife.
Entering the story also
is French priest, Father Bernard, a 65-year-old man, but a priest of a few
months. Previously, Bernard had not frequented the Church for 40 years. In the
course of his life he was divorced and married twice. In 2003 he had a profound
conversion and, subsequently, entered the seminary. He was ordained a priest in
April of 2012. In July he went to Poland and while there visited the tomb of
Father Jerzy Popieluszko at Warsaw. He was fascinated by this Polish
martyr-priest. He “discovered” on his tomb that he was born the same day, month
and year as Father Popieluszko: September 14, 1947. He was so fascinated by the
figure of the Blessed to the point that he always had with him his image and
relics.
“I usually have these
little images in my pocket to give them to people,” he said.
Both Sister Rozalia as
well as Father Bernard remember well that Friday, September 14, 2012, “as if it
was today!” they said.
According to the doctors’
estimates those were Francis’ last hours of life. Sister Rozalia suggested to
his wife that she call a priest, but the woman explained that her husband had
already received the Sacraments, when he was still conscious, so he was ready
to die.”
“Despite this – recounted
the Sister – I felt interiorly that a priest should come.”
It so happens that in the
next room of the same hospital section, a patient had died and the family had
called a priest for the Anointing of the Sick.
Sister Rozalia remembers
the sequence of events. “Once again, I went to Francis’ wife saying that a
priest would come soon to our section. And she agreed to pray together! It was
almost three o’clock in the afternoon, when a priest appeared by the bedside of
the dying Francis. It was Father Bernard, the French priest so fascinated by
the life of Father Popieluszko. In the presence of Francis’ wife and of the
Sister he began to pray for the sick man: he opened a book of prayers and found
a photo of Father Jerzy, because he always had his little images with him.
He knew that it was
September 14, that is, the anniversary of the birth of Blessed Jerzy. Then he
put his image with the relics on the bed where the moribund was lying and said:
“Father Jerzy, today is your birthday. If you can do something, do it today.
Help us!”
Then he continued to pray
in his own words and gave the wife and Sister the text of the prayer for Father
Jerzy’s Canonization.
Father Bernard recalls:
”Everything happened spontaneously because I hadn’t prepared anything before,
only being close to the sick man, when I was looking for the appropriate
prayer, I knew that it was the anniversary of Father Jerzy’s birth and so I
began to pray, asking for his intercession.”
Hardly had the priest and
the Sister left and the couple remained alone, than something unexpected
happened: Francis opened his eyes and asked: “Where am I?” Then he got up and,
as if nothing had happened, he wanted to go to the bathroom alone, but all the
devices to which he was attached did not allow him to do so. His wife looked at
him incredulous. She thought it was a temporary improvement, before the end.
Obviously, neither Father
Bernard nor Sister Rozalia knew what happened after they left the patient’s
room. The following day, Saturday morning, the Sister thought of taking
Communion to Francis’ room.
“I don’t know why, she
said. I knew that Francis was in an unconscious state, that his wife wouldn’t
be in the room in the morning because she had to finish the arrangements
connected with the funeral and even I had a lot of commitments, but something
pushed me to go.”
She went to the hospital,
entered the chapel, took the Most Blessed Sacrament, rather instinctively,
because she did not know to whom she should give it. Then she went to the room
where Francis was lying. She opened the door and saw … the empty bed! Then she
thought that perhaps the man had died during the night. But the door of the
bathroom was open and she heard the water running from the faucet. “Francis, is
it you?, she asked. “Yes, Sister, please come back in twenty minutes, when I
have finished shaving by beard and washed myself then I will be able to have
Communion.”
The Sister did not
believe her ears. Surprised and somewhat shocked, she left the room
immediately. She began to ask if Francis was really alive. She was shocked,
because from the medical point of view, he was dying and could not be cured.
After twenty minutes
Sister Rozalia returned to Francis’ room. She found him dressed, with his beard
shaved, as he had said. They prayed together and she gave him Communion.
“And in this story – says
the Sister with a smile on her face – we can see how that not only we act but
God also does His part. He intervenes through the intercession of His Saints.”
Subsequent medical
examinations evidenced that there was no trace of leukemia in Francis’ body.
“Complete remission of the sickness,” they wrote in the report
After Father Bernard’s
prayer, through the intercession of Blessed Father Jerzy Popieluszko, on
Friday, around 3 pm of September 14, 2012, when it was the Blessed martyr’s
birthday, the sickness disappeared.
Francis’ unexpected and
complete cure will be carefully examined in the process of Canonization of the
Blessed Polish priest.
Canon Law states that to proclaim a Blessed a Saint there must be a miracle confirmed through his intercession, which occurred after his Beatification.
*Milena Kindziuk, Polish
journalist, author of numerous books, among which are two volumes on Father
Jerzy Popieluszko.
The Article was published
in Polish in the Polish weekly “Niedziela” (“Sunday”), n. 38 of September 21,
2014.
November 6, 2014
The Martyrdom of Bl Jerzy
Popieluszko
It was 30 years ago this
fall. A gentle priest named Jerzy Popieluszko, age 37, had been bound and
gagged and stuffed into the trunk of a Fiat driven by three thugs from
communist Poland’s secret police. This kindly priest was chaplain to the
Solidarity movement, the freedom fighters who would ultimately prove fatal to
Soviet communism.
Father Jerzy’s first
beating that evening was so severe that it should have killed him. But somehow,
he was surviving. In fact, somehow he unloosened the ropes that knotted him and
extricated himself from the car. He began to run, shouting to anyone who could
hear, “Help! Save my life!”
He was run down by one of
the goons, who unleashed himself and his club with a fury and ferocity as if he
were possessed by something else. Father Jerzy’s pounding was so relentless
that it wouldn’t be misplaced to think of Christ’s scourging at the pillar.
This young man in persona Christi, not much older than Jesus Christ at his
death agony, was pummeled to death.
The killers drove to a
nearby river. They tied bags of stones to the priest’s ankles and quietly sunk
him into the blackness.
The killers felt an
immediate sense of guilt. They drove away, downing a bottle of vodka. “Now we
are murderers,” one of them somberly thought to himself.
Indeed they were. Of
course, so was the communist system they represented. It and its handmaidens
consumed countless Jerzy Popieluszkos and millions of others whose names are
not remembered.
This priest, however, was
remembered, by the millions—including by the fellow Polish priest, Pope John
Paul II. They merely redoubled their efforts. As Tertullian put it, the blood
of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. The saintly priest’s demise further
fueled the flames for the torch of freedom in Poland and the corresponding
crash and burn of Soviet communism.
Father Jerzy Popieluszko
was one of many martyrs at the hands of atheistic communism. His death 30 years
ago was not in vain.
For Ave Maria Radio, I’m
Paul Kengor. Check out my writings at faithandfreedom.com.
SOURCE : https://catholicexchange.com/martyrdom-bl-jerzy-popieluszko
_10.jpg)
Polish priest, martyr and
hero: Remembering Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko
By Mary Farrow
Warsaw, Poland, Oct 19,
2018 / 15:42 pm
When Communist officials
kidnapped and killed Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, they likely did not intend to
help create a Polish hero, martyr and future saint for the Catholic Church.
Although the Communists
had been trying to kill Popiełuszko in ways that would seem like an accident,
they captured him 34 years ago today, on Oct. 19, 1984. They beat him to death
and threw his body into a river. He was 37 years old.
His crimes: encouraging
peaceful resistance to Communism via the radio waves of Radio Free Europe, and
working as chaplain to the workers of the Solidarność (Solidarity) movement and
trade union, which was known for its opposition to Communism.
Popiełuszko was born on
Sept. 14, 1947 to a farming family in Okopy, a village in eastern Poland
bordering modern-day Ukraine. While World War II had ended, the regime of the
Communist Party had taken place of the Nazis and ruled Poland at the time.
As a young man,
Popiełuszko served his required time in the army before completing seminary
studies and becoming a priest for the Archdiocese of Warsaw. He was ordained on
May 28, 1972 at the age of 24.
As a priest in Warsaw,
Popiełuszko served in both regular and student parishes. He became known for
his steadfast, non-violent resistance to Communism, about which he spoke
frequently in his homilies, which were broadcast on Radio Free Europe.
Popiełuszko participated
in the Solidarity worker's strike in Warsaw on March 27, 1981, a four-hour
national warning strike that essentially ground Poland to a halt, and was the
biggest strike in the history of the Soviet Bloc and in the history of Poland.
After this strikes, the
Communist party declared martial law until July 1983 in the country, severely
restricting the daily life of Poles in an effort to clamp down on their growing
political opposition.
During this time,
Popiełuszko celebrated monthly "Masses for the Homeland" on the last
Sunday of the month, advocating for human rights and peaceful resistance of
Communism, and attracting thousands of attendees. His Warsaw office had also
become an official hub for Solidarity activities.
It was also during this
time that Communist attacks against the priest escalated. In 1982, Communist
authorities attempted to bomb the priest's home, but he escaped unharmed. In
1983, Popiełuszko was arrested on false charges by the Communist authorities,
but was released shortly thereafter following significant pressure from the
Polish people and the Catholic Church.
According to a 1990
article in the Washington Post, Cardinal Józef Glemp, Archbishop of Warsaw
at the time, received a secret message from the Polish Pope John Paul II,
demanding that Glemp defend Popiełuszko and advocate for his release.
"Defend Father Jerzy
- or they'll start finding weapons in the desk of every second bishop,"
the pope wrote.
But the Communist
officials did not relent. According to court testimony, in September 1984
Communist officials had decided that the priest needed to either be pushed from
a train, have a "beautiful traffic accident" or be tortured to death.
On October 13, 1984,
Popiełuszko managed to avoid a traffic accident set up to kill him. The back-up
plan, capture and torture, was carried out by Communist authorities on Oct. 19.
They lured the priest to them by pretending that their car had broken down on a
road along which the priest was travelling.
The captors reportedly
beat the priest with a rock until he died, and then tied his mangled body to
rocks and bags of sand and dumped it in a reservoir along the Vistula River.
His body was recovered on
Oct. 30, 1984.
His death grieved and
enraged Catholics and members of the Solidarity movement, who had hoped to
accomplish social change without violence.
"When the news was
announced at his parish church, his congregation was silent for a moment and
then began shrieking and weeping with grief," the
BBC wrote of the priest's death.
"The worst has
happened. Someone wanted to kill and he killed not only a man, not a Pole, not
only a priest. Someone wanted to kill the hope that it is possible to avoid
violence in Polish political life," Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, a
friend of Popiełuszko, said at the time.
He also urged mourners to
remain calm and peaceful during the priest's funeral, which drew more than a
quarter of a million people.
Again facing pressure
from the Church and the Polish people, Poland's president Gen. Wojciech
Jaruzelski was forced to answer for the priest's death, and arrested Captain
Grzegorz Piotrowski, Leszek Pękala, Waldemar Chmielewski and Colonel Adam
Pietruszka as responsible for the murder.
"Our intelligence
sources in Poland do not believe it," the Washington Post reported in
1990, when the case was being revisited.
"Jaruzelski had
presided over a far-reaching anti-church campaign. At least two other priests
died mysteriously. And Jaruzelski created the climate that allowed the SB (Communist
secret service) to persecute and kill Father Jerzy."
In 2009, Popiełuszko was
posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the highest civilian or
military decoration in Poland. That same year, he was declared a martyr of the
Catholic Church by Pope Benedict XVI, and on June 6, 2010 he was beatified. A
miracle in France through the intercession of Popiełuszko is being investigated
in France as the final step in his cause for canonization.
Popiełuszko is one of
more than 3,000 priests martyred in Poland under the Nazi and Communist regimes
which dominated the country from 1939-1989.
On Friday, Archbishop
Stanisław Budzik of Poland and the Polish bishops' conference released a
statement honoring the memory of Father Popiełuszko and all the 20th century
priest martyrs of Poland.
"Today, remembering
Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko, we remember the unswerving priests who preached the
Gospel, served God and people in the most terrible times and had the courage
not only to suffer for the faith but to give what is most dear to men: their
lives."
Tags:
Mary Farrow worked as a
staff writer for Catholic News Agency until 2020. She has a degree in
journalism and English education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
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A
memorial in the shape of an overturned cross commemorating the kidnapping of
Father J. Popieluszko in Górsk on 19 October 1984
Pomnik
w kształcie przewróconego krzyża upamiętniający porwanie księdza J. Popiełuszki
w Górsku w dniu 19 października 1984 r.
A
memorial in the shape of an overturned cross commemorating the kidnapping of
Father Joseph Popieluszko in Górsk on 19 October 1984
Pomnik
w kształcie przewróconego krzyża upamiętniający porwanie księdza Józefa
Popiełuszki w Górsku w dniu 19 października 1984 r.
A memorial in the shape of an overturned cross commemorating the kidnapping of Father Joseph Popieluszko in Górsk on 19 October 1984
Pomnik w kształcie przewróconego krzyża upamiętniający porwanie księdza Józefa Popiełuszki w Górsku w dniu 19 października 1984 r.
A memorial in the shape of an overturned cross commemorating the kidnapping of Father Joseph Popieluszko in Górsk on 19 October 1984
Pomnik w kształcie przewróconego krzyża upamiętniający porwanie księdza Józefa Popiełuszki w Górsku w dniu 19 października 1984 r.
The Touching Story of
Blessed Father Jerzy Popieluszko
Mar 1, 2019 Eleonore Villarrubia
This beloved and
unassuming young priest of Poland was a true hero of that tortured land during
the Soviet Communist occupation. Now a Blessed, Father Jerzy (pronounced
YEH-Zhe) was beloved by everyone in his homeland, believers and non-believers
alike, because of his bravery in the face of extreme hatred on the part of the
Communist officials. His story should be much more widely known than it is.
Never in good health, the
strongest part of Father Jerzy were his hands. His most beloved possessions
were the crucifix and Rosary sent to him by Pope John Paul II, a fellow
countryman. He was sickly his whole life, yet he never complained of illness or
injury. One day when he was making toys with his brothers and sisters, a nail
pierced his palm. Later, one of the children noticed blood dripping from his
hand. One of his siblings told the parents because young Jerzy did not want to
bother anyone.
Young Jerzy’s great hero
was Saint Maximillian Kolbe, another Polish priest who gave his life to save
another prisoner – a man with a family – at Auschwitz. He determined early on
to become a priest, but kept it a secret so that the authorities could not
alter his examination results or pressure the family to keep him out of the
seminary.
In 1966, his entire
seminary class was drafted into the special indoctrination unit in violation of
a church-state agreement. This cruel treatment was reserved for the most
outspoken church leaders, including the future Pope John Paul II.
The horrible treatment he
received in this “special unit” broke his health, but not his spirit. He wrote
to his father “It turned out to be very tough, but I can’t be broken by threats
or torture.” His seminary professors demanded that he take a period of rest,
but he refused. “One doesn’t suffer when one suffers for Christ,” was his
reply.
He became so weak that he
suffered recurring fainting spells. A fellow priest found him lying in a dead
faint at the foot of the altar, unconscious. After he endured another long
hospital stay, it was discovered that Father Jerzy suffered from a serious
blood disorder. He would need transfusions after each recurrence of the
illness. He was placed on a special diet. His doctors hoped that a quiet life
would prevent further episodes. He planned to rest and spend more time with his
beloved seminary students when the call came that would give him no rest for
the remainder of his life. His new position as chaplain to factory workers
“gave him wings,” and changed the course of his life. He worked tirelessly to
learn how to operate machinery, but more importantly, he grew to love the
workers and they grew to love him. He tore down barriers between himself and
the worker; there were many baptisms and weddings. All this brought him much
joy.
In the meantime, He was
shadowed relentlessly by the secret police, receiving death threats and urged
to break contact with his beloved workers. “Truth that costs nothing is a lie,”
became his motto.
In autumn of 1981, Father
Jerzy came to the United States to attend the funeral of a beloved aunt. Like
many Poles, he loved America and his many friends tried to convince him to stay
and take political asylum. He knew that his people would be in danger if did
that: “They need me and I need them.” So, as soon as the funeral was over, he
flew back to Warsaw.
The communist regime
declared a “state of war” against the Polish people on Dec 13, 1981 and, after
attacks by security forces on factories and demonstrators, the Solidarity
movement was forced underground. Solidarity was the first independent labor
union founded within the Soviet bloc. It had over nine million members. Those
workers who escaped arrest turned up at Father Jerzy’s apartment as soon as
martial law was declared. “It was reflex,” said one worker — “when in trouble,
see Jerzy.”
They came because they
knew he was not afraid. On one wall of his apartment was a huge map of Poland
marking every prison camp; next to it was a makeshift crucifix. When asked if
he was afraid to have such a thing on his wall, he answered, “It is they who
are afraid.” For Father Jerzy, his calling could be summed up in a verse from
Saint Luke that he had chosen when he was ordained. It read, “To let the
oppressed go free.”
The Polish people who had
heard of Father Jerzy came from near and far to help those oppressed by the
communists. People came from distant parishes and from abroad to give him aid.
While his own garments and shoes rotted away, he cared only to provide for the
needy, both Catholics and unbelievers. In return for their generosity, the
secret police persecuted his workers and students. They followed him wherever
he traveled. His apartment and car were electronically bugged so that the
secret police knew his location at all times.
Martial law had silenced
millions of Poles, but Father Jerzy was not afraid to speak out. He began to
hold special “Masses for the Homeland” as Christmas (the celebration of which
was forbidden) approached. Many of the miners from southern Poland were so
moved by the strength and confidence of his soft voice that they proclaimed
that it was the most powerful they had ever heard. Father said openly what they
really felt, but could not say. They would rise again after any humiliation,
“for you have knelt only before God.” The regime had banned the mere mention of
Solidarity, but Father declared, “Solidarity means remaning internally free,
even in conditions of slavery: overcoming the fear that grips you by your
throat.”
The “Mass for the
Homeland” grew into a national event, with people coming from all ver Poland to
attend. The most famous actors in Poland vied to take part in the readings.
Even at his Masses,
security forces forces circled the church as police tried to incite the
congregation. Father’s only words were “Overcome evil with good.” The priest
received hundreds of letters of thanks from Mass-goers, thanking him for restoring
their faith. There were many conversions, including ranking communists who
dared not go to anyone else. They knew that they could trust this priest.
Thousands of paper copies
and audio cassettes were made of his preaching and spread across Poland. Church
officials had forbidden the spread of these materials; so Father had to open
his own underground print shop. His acclaim grew so great that even the Warsaw
police refused to take part in actions against him. Men from other parts of
Poland had to be brought in to do the dirty work.
As his Masses grew in
popularity, the greater became the threats and harassment. “The most they can
do is kill me,” he said. However, when the first attempt was made on his life,
he was shaken. He had just collapsed into bed at 2 AM on the first anniversary
of martial law, exhausted from preparing Christmas gifts for the children in
Warsaw’s hospitals, when the doorbell rang. Father was too tired to get up and
answer it. A moment later, a bomb crashed into the next room, blowing out the
windows where he would have been standing.
Father was astonished at
the hatred behind this attack. He had always thought that he would be exiled to
Siberia like generations of Polish priests before him. He had even kept
practicing his Russian so that he could “preach the good word in the camps.” Now
he confided to a friend that he began to feel real fear. But nothing would
separate him from his flock, because “there is a dimension beyond fear. Arrest,
torture, even death itself are not the end of the story.” After the initial
attempt on his life, brawny steel workers guarded him around the clock — “like
a treasure, like a brother’s brother,” said one of the men.
One day a steelworker
friend came to him in despair. Under threats of blackmail, he had signed a
document agreeing to become a police informer. If he would become an informer,
his friends and fellow workers would have nothing to do with him. If not, the
police would come for him. In order to help his friend, Father told the man he
would have to use his name. The man had no choice but to agree. When the
situation became public, the police did not pursue it.
Father’s boldness enraged
the authorities. Silencing him became a top priority. The priest’s movements
were being followed at the top level of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with
major decisions on the case taken by the minister himself. At special meetings
with church officials the regime demanded an end be put to Father Jerzy’s
activities. Hearing that arrest was imminent, Father’s parishioners blocked
police attempts to take him away for interrogation. Church officials reached
the agreement that Father would submit to at most an hour of questioning.
When the search party
arrived at the apartment, which was a gift from an American aunt, they “found”
grenades, explosives and ammunition, as well as leaflets calling for armed
uprisings. Of course, it was the police who planted these things so that Father
would spend the second anniversary of the uprising in jail.
Father’s friends knew
that he would not last long without his medications. The night in jail proved
to be profitable. He spent the night talking to a convicted murderer and by
dawn the man had confessed. Of course Father had no consecrated hosts on him;
so he blessed a piece of prison bread and told the man, “Next time, we shall
share a meal.”
The Cardinal-Primate of
Poland, Jozef Glemp, had never been fond of Father Jerzy’s activities. He
believed it was his first priority to preserve church-state “dialogue.” He
disapproved of Solidarity, interested only in his accommodating approach as the
only path to peace. For Father Jerzy, the only path to preach was respect for
human rights. Cardinal Glemp was ordered by party magistrates to silence
sixty-nine “anti-socialist” priests. It was obvious that the Cardinal
disapproved of Father’s activities. When the Polish Pope sent Father Jerzy a
crucifix and a rosary, Glemp changed his tune and praised the young priest as
an example for the Polish clergy.
John Paul II had great
admiration for the young priest for bringing together all parts of Polish
society in a bold moral challenge to communist power. Father Jerzy’s spirit
cheered the Pope and gave him hope for Poland’s eventual freedom from communist
yoke. Soviet authorities, worried about the increase in religious fervor in the
homeland, forbade the young priest and the Pope to meet with each other during
the Holy Father’s trip to Poland in 1983.
General Wojciech
Jaruzelski, the Polish puppet dictator, visited Moscow in May of 1984.
Increasingly sharp attacks on Father Jerzy and other “extremist” priests
appeared in the Polish press. Wherever he preached, death threats by phone and
letter grew more numerous and alarming. To cheer the young priest, Warsaw
students had given him a little black puppy which he promptly named “Tajniak” —
Polish for “secret agent” — because it followed him everywhere.
Thirteen interrogations
in the first six months of 1984 were staged to terrorize Father. His supporters
always accompanied their priest to secret police headquarters. They waited
outside, chanting hymns and prayers until the end of the ordeal. Inside, Father
sat with hands behind his back, fingering the rosary beads that the Pope had
sent him. He answered their questions as he always had — by reciting the rosary
again and again. Furious, the agents would finally release him.
With Moscow and Warsaw
turning up the heat, Father Jerzey finally lost the support of Cardinal Glemp.
At his May 1984 Mass for the Homeland, Father made the Primate furious. Eleven
top Solidarity leaders had just rejected a deal that representatives of the
Primate and the regime had pushed them to accept: release from prison if they
would drop their Solidarity activities. Father praised the prisoners’ courage
for not betraying their ideals. When people “support the mechanisms of evil
they become responsible for their own slavery.”
From that time on, the
Primate’s negotiators dealt directly with secret police officials over Father’s
silence. They reached an a greement with the authorities to muzzle him, but
could not enforce it. “If I shut up, it means they have won” he told an Italian
journalist. “To speak out is precisely my job.” When the Cardinal spoke
publicly, he hardly drew anyone. Conversely, whenever and wherever Father Jerzy
spoke, he drew the crowds.
In the summer of 1984,
Church and Solidarity officials learned of secret plans to kill one of three
leading “anti state” priests, including Father Jerzy. Several priests had
already been killed in suspicious “accidents” involving the secret police.
Father Jerzy’s own car had barely escaped a similar accident. A papal chaplain
had died in a mysterious car crash in 1982, and several other pro-Solidarity
clerics narrowly escaped a similar death. Polish Church officials chose to keep
these and other killings quiet rather than protest them.
The workers redoubled
their protection of Father Jerzy. State security cars circled the rectory and
his apartment no longer was open to the troubled and the needy. Father rarely
left the apartment now and avoided giving rides to friends, fearing that officials
had sabotaged his car. However, the Masses for the Homeland continued. In the
words of one worker, “We need it more than bread.” Father responded to the
calls for violence, “You conquer people with your open heart, not with a closed
fist.”
As he grew more and more
frail with each passing month, he continued to bring aid and good cheer to
Warsaw’s growing numbers of sick and poor. One woman was surprised to see
Father leaving her mother’s apartment after bringing her Holy Communion. The
daughter thought of him as a national celebrity, while the mother knew him only
as her parish priest who visited regularly.
The sick and worried
young priest hardly slept at all any more. Many nights he awoke in a sweat. He
tried to appear calm, but his foreboding was so strong that others felt it as
well. His old cheerfulness was gone, and his friends felt that he was near the
breaking point. After the usual prayers after one Mass, Father turned to the
congregation and stated, “Now I need your prayers.
The ring was closing around
our priest. He returned to his family village, expecting the worst. He lingered
in each corner of his family home as if saying good-bye. His mother watched him
walk the farm and fields of his childhood. He was accused of holding “seances
of hate” and “sessions of political rabies” in his church. One government
official added, “Even though there is no such thing as a human soul, the
struggle for power over it is real.”
The next day at secret
police headquarters, the officers in charge of his case excitedly discussed
their new orders: to go beyond the intimidation that had failed so far. He
could be pushed off a moving train or have a “beautiful traffic accident” on
the road. They could kidnap and torture him until he revealed the information
they sought. Or maybe his weak heart would give out. The orders to eliminate
him at any cost came from “the very top.”
By early October, Church
officials assured the regime that the “Popieluszko problem” would be taken care
of to their liking. The Primate’s increasingly harsh rebukes — for endangering
the interests of the Church and worse — left Father Jerzy shattered. Friends
recall seeing him sobbing uncontrollably just after had come from a meeting
with Cardinal Glemp.
The Pope watched events
in Warsaw with mounting alarm. He was afraid for Father Jerzy’s life. “One must
suffer for the truth, the priest had written. “That is why I am ready for
anything.” In lieu of Cardinal Glemp’s accommodation with the regime, the Pope
sent a special blessing and crucifix to Father Jerzy. In Rome, John Paul
demanded, “Why don’t they defend him!”
It was planned that
Father would be kidnapped outside of Warsaw because of his strong worker guards
there. The police tried to force him to travel alone. His traveling bodyguard,
Waldemar Chrostowski, was interrogated many times and presured to “cease their
friendship.” When he ignored the warnings his apartment was gutted by a
powerful firebomb. Even though Waldemar was a firefighter by profession,
authorities halted investigation of the incident.
On October 9, the order
was given that Father Jerzy was to be killed without fail, but first, security
agents should try to “extract” as much information from him as possible in a
wartime Nazi bunker in the forest. Any others traveling with him would also be
murdered.
On October 13, 1984,
Father and his bodyguard were returning from his last Mass for the Homeland”
along with a prominent Solidarity leader. Thanks to the bodyguard/chauffeur’s
quick reflexes, they eluded the secret police ambush. When the death squad
returned to headquarters, a superior remarked “What a pity — it could have been
a bigger accident with so many involved.”
Father Jerzy suddenly
felt that an unbearable burden had just been lifted from him. He knew the end
was near. A colleague remarked, “He went straight for what was coming to meet
him.”
A few nights later,
Father noticed that a secret police car had been stationed outside his window
for several hours in the icy cold. “They must be freezing,” he told
Chrostowski, and sent him down with a message”You ‘ve been on duty for so long
– Father Jerzy wants you to have a cup of coffee.” The officers looked annoyed
and turned away.
When he traveled, Father
like to dress casually, but this time he put on his priestly garments. As
always, he took along the rosary, his greatest treasure, given him by the Pope.
That evening he presided at a special Mass for the Working People at a small
town in the countryside. The topic of his sermon was “Overcome Evil with Good.”
Secret agents waited outside, wrapping their wooden clubs with rage. Father
spoke his last words to the congregation, “Most of all, may we be free from the
desire for violence and vengeance.”
Father wanted to be back
at his home parish for Mass the next morning. His friends had spotted a strange
Fiat waiting outside the church in the small town. In the car was the officer
in charge of the long-running investigation, one of the most brilliant and
trusted officers in the Polish secret police. With him were two other highly
decorated officers from the security service’s Fourth Department, responsible
for religious affairs. This was the same team that had tried to ambush the
priest six days before. These callous men had argued about selling the priest’s
car for spare parts.
Parishioners offered to
escort Father Jerzy by car back to Warsaw, but he was used to being followed
and it was late. He and his bodyguard would go alone. The secret police
overtook them on a deserted road about a half hour from the town. They held the
bodyguard at gunpoint. The captain dragged Father by the cassock to the Fiat.
“What are you doing, Gentleman? How can you treat someone like this?”
In a cold fury, the
kidnappers beat him with fists and clubs, smashing his skull and face.
Unconscious, he was bound, gagged and thrown into the trunk. As they headed for
a lonely stretch of woods, the bodyguard hurled himself from the Fiat in a
desperate attempt to escape. He made it to a nearby workers hostel and quickly
raised the alarm. When they reached the hospital emergency ward, another squad
of secret police and a state prosecutor were waiting to take him away. But for
the authorities it was too late. The bodyguard had already alerted the Church.
The secret police Fiat
sped on with Father Jerzy in the trunk The captain’s men were arguing now, and
downing quick shots of vodka. The kidnappers were so terrified that they would
be identified that they wanted to leave the priest in the woods. “No,” said
another angrily, “the priest must die.”
With the bodyguard’s
escape, news of the abduction had swept across Poland. Shock and outrage were
nationwide. The parish church overflowed with thousands of people. Every night,
larger crowds came to the Masses, praying for Father’s deliverance. Massive security
forces surrounded the Warsaw steelworks, where the men were praying at work.
Throughout Poland, there were mass meetings in factories and spontaneous
prayers in schools. The national crisis mounted. Other churchmen denounced the
kidnapping, but Cardinal Glemp refused to comment. The Holy Father declared
himself “deeply shaken,” condemning the shameful act and demanding Father
Jerzy’s immediate release.
After ten days of
waiting, the nation’s patience ran raw. Authorities dispatched large security
forces and imposed emergency measures in cities and towns. The last Sunday of
October, a record 50,000 people engulfed the parish church at a cold, outdoor
Mass for the Homeland. They listened to a tape of Father Jerzy’s last sermon.
They hoped and prayed to see him again.
When smiling security
officers pulled the battered corpse of Father Jerzy from a reservoir on the
river Vistula, about eighty miles from Warsaw, it was tortured beyone
recognition. A sack of rocks hung from his legs. His body had been trussed from
neck to feet with a nylon rope so that if he resisted he would strangle
himself. Several gags had worked free and lay across his clerical collar and
cassock, soaked with the priest’s vomit and blood.
Officially, Father spent
less than two hours with his kidnappers, but his torture was much too extensive
and systematic to have in inflicted in that brief time. Family members present
at the autopsy described a body covered head to foot with deep, bloody wounds
and marks of torture. His face was deformed. His eyes and forehead had been
beated until black. His jaws, nose, mouth were smashed. His face was deformed,
and both hands were broken and cut, as if the priest had been shielding it from
blows. His fingers and toes dark red and brown from the repeated clubbing. Part
of his scalp and large strips of skin on his legs had been torn off.
The autopsy showed a
brain concussion and damaged spinal cord. His muscles had been pounded again
and again until limp. Internal injuries from the beatings had left blood in his
lungs. One of the doctors that performed the post-mortem reported that in all
his medical practice he had never seen anyone mutilated internally. The kidneys
and intestines were reduced to pulp, as in others cases of prolonged police
torture in Poland. When his mouth was opened, the teeth were found completely
smashed. In place of his tongue, there was only mush.
A group of priests tried
to identify the body, but could not recognize their friend. Identification was
finally made by Father’s brother from a birthmark on the side of his chest.
Making the full autopsy report public was deemed too explosive by regime and
Church officials, who continue to suppress it. Church and independent sources
familiar with the report have said it details an even more horrifying picture
suffered by the defenseless priest.
“The worst has happened,”
declared Lech Walesa, Solidarity’s leader. In Rome, the Holy Father reacted
with shock, following the news late into the night. At the parish church in
Warsaw, a priest made several attempts to get the mourning population to say
the Our Father. When he reached “Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass
against us” the congregation refused to pray with him. It took several more
attempts before the people would utter that line, and when they did, they
prayed it with great force.
Just as was feared, when
the state trial was held for the perpetrators, only the mid-level criminals
were sentenced. Those who masterminded the plot got off scott-free. Because
they were afraid that Father Jerzey’s final resting place would become a
shrine, the state officials pressured his parents to bury him in their distant
village. The faithful demanded a huge funeral and that he be buried in the
parish cemetery. It was the pleading of Father’s mother that he be buried at
the parish church in Warsaw.
Father’s mother had
continued to wear a red shawl as long as she believed her son was alive. Now,
for the funeral, she wore her black shawl. On the day of the funeral ten
thousand steelworkers in hard hats marched past secret police headquarters,
chanting “We forgive,” “Greetings from the underground,” and “No freedom
without Solidarity.” Half a million people filled the streets leading up to the
parish church. Scattered throughout were the forbidden Solidarity banners of
factories, schools and offices from every corner of Poland. One read “A strike
at the heart of the nation,” another proclaimed, “But they can’t kill the
soul.”
Father Jerzy knew that
his death would have immense power. “Living I could not achieve it,” he once
said when the danger rose. The parish church, Saint Stanislaw’s has become a
national shrine. As of the writing of this piece by James Fox in 1985, and
unending river of pilgrims flow past Father’s grave. Great mounds of flowers
are put there. Even communists visited the grave. A thousand-man volunteer
force guards the church yard in teams around the clock.
The murder of the holy,
defenseless priest emboldened the populace and encourage many conversions and
vocations. All the while the regime continued to defame the priest.
Today, Poland, as the
rest of the former Iron Curtain countries of Europe, is a free country and a
proud ally of our own country. The enemies of Christ rule Europe no more.
***Author’s note: It was
by chance that I was looking for reading material when I happened upon this
Reader’s Digest of May, 1985. I could not sleep thinking that Father Jerzy’s
story must be made widely known. The title of the original article was “Do you
hear the Bells, Father Jerzy?” The author of the piece is John Fox.
Father Jerzy, may you
rest in peace.
Father Jerzy, pray for
us!
SOURCE : https://catholicism.org/the-touching-story-of-blessed-father-jerzy-popieluszko.html
Pomnik
ks. Jerzego Popiełuszki w Parku Jordana w Krakowie.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W języku angielskim
1. BOYES Roger, Moody
John, The Priest who had to die. The Tragedy of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, wyd.
Victor Gollancz, London 1986 ss. 204.
2. BOYES Roger, Moody
John, The Priest and the policeman. The courageous life and cruel murder of
Father Jerzy Popieluszko, wyd. Baker Book House, New York 1987 ss. 251.
3. DALY Frank, The life
and death of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, Nottingham 1985.
4. HARWOOD Ronald, The
deliberate death of a Polish priest, wyd. Almeida Theatre Islington, London
1985; wyd. Amber Lane Press, Oxford 1985.
5. LEWEK Antoni, Rev.
Jerzy Popiełuszko - martyr. Martyrdom of the Priest - source of the Church's
vitality, Warsaw 1985 ss. 12. Regnery Books, Chicago 1986
6. LEWEK Antoni, New
Sanctuary of Poles. The grave of the Martyr-Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, Warsaw
1986 ss. 14.
7. LEWEK Antoni, Father
Jerzy Popieluszko. A symbol of victims of communism, Warsaw 1991 ss. 60.
8. MALACKI Zygmunt,
Venerable Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek, Warszawa 2002
ss. 70.
9. Memories of Father
Jerzy Popiełuszko, wyd. Franciscan Friars, Chicago 1986.
10. POPIEŁUSZKO Jerzy,
The prince of love. The sermons of Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko. wyd. Incorporated
Catholic Truth Society: Veritas Foundation Publication Centre, London 1985 ss.
63.
11. POPIELUSZKO Jerzy,
The way of my Cross. Masses in Warsaw, New York 1985 ss. 267; wyd.
12. RUANE Kevin, Murder
of Father Popieluszko, Vintage/Ebury (A Division of Random House Group) 1999.
13. RUANE Kevin, Reasons
of state - to kill a Polish priest, wyd. Harper Collins, Sydney 2002.
14. RUANE Kevin, To kill
the Priest. The murder of Father Popieluszko and the fall of communism, wyd.
Gibson Square Books, London 2004.
15. SIKORSKA Grażyna, A
Martyr for the Truth. Jerzy Popieluszko, wyd. Collins Fount Paperbacks, London
1985 ss. 134; wyd. W. B. Erdmans Publishing Company, Michiggan 1985 ss. 156;
wyd. Harper, Sydney 1985.
16. SIKORSKA Grażyna,
Jerzy Popieluszko, wyd. Catholic Truth Society, London 1999.
W języku duńskim
17. NIELSEN Brovst
Bjarne, De har vandret ad vejen: Morten Nielsen, Kim Malthe-Bruun, Kaj Munk,
Jerzy Popieluszko, wyd. Christensens, Struer 1985 ss. 27.
18. POPIEŁUSZKO Jerzy,
Håbet kan ikke dø: tolv pradikener. Redakcja: Jolanta Grabowska, wyd. Doxa,
Bagsværd 1985.
W języku francuskim
19. BOYES Roger, Moody
John, Le prêtre qui devait mourir. La tragédie du père Jerzy Popieluszko, wyd.
Albin Michel, Paris 1987 ss. 314.
20. FREDRO-BONIECKI
Tadeusz, Le IVe Département et l'affaire Popieluszko. Tłumaczenie: Karol
Zaremba. Słowo wstępne: Aleksandra Kwiatkowska-Viateau, wyd. Criterion, Paris
1990 ss. 275.
21. LEWEK Antoni, L'abbé
Jerzy Popiełuszko - Martyr. Le martyre du prêtre - source de la vitalité de
l'Eglise, Varsovie 1985 ss. 14.
22. LEWEK Antoni, Un
nouveau sanctuaire des Polonais. Le tombeau du Martyr - l'abbé Jerzy
Popiełuszko, Varsovie 1986 ss.18.
23. LEWEK Antoni, L'abbé
Jerzy Popiełuszko. Symbole des victims du communisme, Varsovie 1991 ss. 64.
24. MALACKI Zygmunt,
Serviteur de Dieu Jerzy Popiełuszko, Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek, Warszawa
2003 ss. 70.
25. MINK Georges, Michel
Patrick, Mort d'un prêtre. L'affaire Popieluszko. Analyse d'une logique
normalisatrice, wyd. Fayard, Paris 1985 ss. 345.
26. MINK Georges, Michel
Patrick, Vie et mort de Jerzy Popiełuszko, Paris 1985.
27. POPIEŁUSZKO Jerzy,
Carnets intimes (1980-1984). Tłumaczenie i wstęp: Jean Offredo, wyd. Cana,
Paris 1988.
28. POPIELUSZKO Jerzy, Le chemin de ma croix. Messes à Varsovie. Tłumaczenie: Michel de Wieyzka. Prezentacja: Jean Offredo, wyd. Cana, Paris 1984 ss. 202.
29. SIKORSKA Grażyna, Vie
et mort de Jerzy Popieluszko, tłum. Arnaud Dupin de Beyssat, wyd. Les Editions
du Cerf, Paris 1985 ss. 141.
W języku hiszpańskim
30. POPIEŁUSZKO Jerzy,
Sermones en Varsovie. Las homilias del sacerdote aseinado en Octuber de 1984,
tłum. Basili Girban, wyd. Arin, Barcelona 1985.
31. SIKORSKA Grażyna,
Jerzy Popiełuszko. Un Martir de Verdad, wyd. Editiones del Aguila Coronada,
Buenos Aires 1985.
32. BOYES Roger, Moody
John, (w transkrypcji) Bosatsu (= Morderstwo z premedytacją). Tłumaczenie z
angielskiego: Takeshi Mizutani, wyd. Shinchosha, Tokyo 1995 ss. 354.
W języku niemieckim
33. LAMMICH Siegfried,
Der Popiełuszko-Prozess. Sicherheitspolizei und katolische Kirche in Polen,
wyd. Wissenschaft und Politik, Köln 1985.
34. LEWEK Antoni, Das
neue Heiligtum der Polen. Die Grabstatt des Märtyrers Jerzy Popiełuszko,
Warschau 1986 ss. 16.
35. LEWEK Antoni,
Priester Jerzy Popiełuszko. Ein Symbol der Opfer des Kommunismus, Warschau 1991
ss. 64.
36. MALACKI Zygmunt, Der
Diener Gottes Jerzy Popiełuszko, Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek, Warschau 2003
ss. 75.
37. MOTYLEWITZ Georg (red
i tłum.), Das war Popiełuszko. Eine Dokumentation, wyd. Herder,
Wien-Freiburg-Basel 1985 ss. 88.
38. POPIELUSZKO Jerzy, An
das Volk. Predigten und Überlegungen 1982 - 1984. Przedmowa i redakcja: ks.
Franciszek Blachnicki. Tłumaczenie: Michael Kirch, wyd. Erb, Düsseldorf 1985
ss. 128.
39. POPIELUSZKO Jerzy,
Predigten an das polnische Volk, wyd. DuMont Literatur, Köln 1992 ss. 160.
40. SKARBA Walter Maria,
Pater Jerzy Popieluszko. Ein Märtyrer für die Kirche Polens, wyd. PATTLOCH,
München 1986 ss. 80.
41. SCHUBERT Günter,
Unversöhnt. Polen nach dem Priestermord, wyd. Bund, Köln 1985 ss. 131.
W języku norweskim
42. SIKORSKA Grażyna, En
martyr for sannheten. Historien om Jerzy Popieluszko. Epilog: arcybiskup Henryk
Gulbinowicz, ks. Adam Boniecki, Stefan Frankiewicz i in. Tłumaczenie: Geir
Uthaug, wyd. Ansgar, Oslo 1985 ss. 166.
W języku rosyjskim
43. LEWEK Antoni, (w
transkrypcji) Nowaja swjatynja polskogo naroda. U mogiły ks. Jerzy Popiełuszko.
Fakty - sobytija - pjerspjektiwy, Warszawa 1986 ss.24.
W języku szwedzkim
44. SIKORSKA Grażyna,
Martyr för sanningen. En bok om Pater Jerzy Popieluszko, wyd. Libris, Örebro
1989 ss. 187.
W języku węgierskim
45. Jerzy Popieluszko,
wyd. Egyházfórum Könyvei 2, Luzern 1989.
W języku włoskim
46. LEWEK Antoni, Il
nouvo santuario dei Polacchi. La tomba di don Jerzy Popiełuszko, Varsavia 1986
ss. 22.
47. LEWEK Antoni, Don
Jerzy Popiełuszko. Simbolo delle vittime del comunismo, Varsavia 1991 ss. 64.
48. MADDALONI Vincenzo,
Popiełuszko - La Polonia - I Polacchi, wyd. Editioni Paoline, Milano 1985.
49. MALACKI Zygmunt, Il
Servo di Dio padre Jerzy Popiełuszko, Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek, Warszawa
ss. 69.
50. POPIEŁUSZKO Jerzy, Il
cammino della mia croce. Messe a Varsavia, wyd. Queriniana, Brescia 1986.
51. POPIEŁUSZKO Jerzy, La
mia vita per la verita. Diario - Altri scitti - Testimonianze. Wstęp i
tłumaczenie: Luciana Mirri, Wojciech Przeklasa, wyd. Edizioni Messaggero,
Padova 1998.
52. POPIEŁUSZKO Jerzy,
Omelie per la Patria, wyd. Centro Studi Europa Orientale, Milano 1985.
(*) Bibliografię
opracował: ks. Antoni Lewek. Została ona opublikowana także w dwumiesięczniku
"Ateneum Kapłańskie" 143 (2004) z. 3 s. 536-550.
SOURCE : https://web.archive.org/web/20070208043438/http://www.popieluszko.net.pl/xJerzy/biblobc.htm
The tomb
of Blessed Father Jerzy Popiełuszko (Polish: Grób
bł. ks. Jerzego Popiełuszki). Monumental grave marker of the Polish
priest Jerzy Popiełuszko, designed by Jerzy Kalina, located in Warsaw, at St.
Stanislaus Kostka Church. 9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Blessed_Father_Jerzy_Popie%C5%82uszko)
Grób
Jerzego Popiełuszki przy kościele św. Stanisława Kostki w Warszawie.
Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko’s
Long Road
The life and times of the
young Polish priest martyred by the Communists regime in 1984
Jul 10, 20197:56 PM
Hello from Krakow. I
spent my last morning in Warsaw visiting the grave of the Blessed Jerzy
Popieluszko, and the small museum next to it celebrating his life and death.
The museum is connected to the Warsaw parish, St. Stanislaus Kostka, where
Father Jerzy was serving at the time of his 1984 murder by the Communist secret
police. He was 37 years old.
I was in high school when
Father Jerzy’s assassination made international headlines. All I remembered
about him was that he had been killed by the secret police because they
considered him a threat to the regime, that he is revered as a martyr of
Communism, and that his name sounded strange to the ears of English speakers
(it’s pronounced “pop-eh-WOOSH-ko”).
As I would learn this
morning, Father Jerzy – soon to be St. Jerzy Popieluszko, as the Catholic
Church has documented proof of a miracle it attributes to his intercession – is
one of the keys to this book I’m working on. Let me explain.
Father Jerzy is buried
under a large stone cross laid on the lawn outside the parish. It is surrounded
by boulders. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that they symbolize
rosary beads, and that the cross stands for the rosary’s crucifix. The
gravesite’s design emphasizes that Father Jerzy died in unity with Christ.
Additionally, the layout of the rosary “beads” forms the shape of Poland.
In the museum’s lobby, my
interpreter Lukasz and I waited for Pawel Keska, the manager for the
development of the museum, and
of documentation of the life of Father Jerzy. As we waited, I met a couple of
American nuns from the Sisters Of Life, a pro-life order started by New York’s
Cardinal John O’Connor. The sisters were accompanying a group of young American
women from Focus, the Catholic college ministry, on a Polish pilgrimage. When
Pawel arrived, he led us to a table in the museum cafeteria, and our interview
began.
“I’ve been working here
for two years. I’m a journalist and a theologian. And I have been thinking for
two years why this person is important,” Pawel said. “And I see how important
he is. Since Father Popieluszko’s death, his grave has been visited by 23
million people. Why? It’s still a mystery to me that I try to solve.”
(Note: in Polish, they
use the term “Priest Popieluzsko,” which is how Pawel referred to him in
conversation. In English, that sounds cold and harsh — which is not how it
sounds to Polish ears. I have mostly rendered it “Father Jerzy” below, because
that better conveys the spirit in which my interlocutor spoke about the
priest.)
The first witness to the
priest’s life that Pawel met told him a story that a million Poles turned out
for the murdered cleric’s funeral there at St. Stanislaus Kostka parish.
(Official estimates are 250,000, but many Poles say that’s an official number
released by the Communist regime, which vastly underestimated the number for
political reasons; the museum maintains that the number is between 250,000 and
one million.) The Communist regime sent soldiers to Warsaw to ensure that the
funeral wouldn’t turn into a revolutionary insurrection. Cardinal Jozef Glemp,
the nation’s primate, said the funeral mass, and Solidarity trade union leader
Lech Walesa was one of the eulogists.
“The witness told me in
that massive crowd he saw a police car,” said Pawel. “People were slamming
their hands down on the car, shouting, ‘We forgive! We forgive!’” In that is an
answer for the situation that our world is in now.”
Pawel had a second story
for me. In a big city like Warsaw, a big city of big crowds and big historical
events, it’s easy to forget the potential significance of tiny places, far off
the beaten track. Two weeks ago, he accompanied a group of young pilgrims to
the small rural village in eastern Poland where Father Jerzy was born. The
district is so poor that when the priest, who was born just after the Second
World War, had to study by candlelight, because there was no electricity.
Pawel’s group met Father Jerzy’s brother, who still lives there, and is now an
elderly man reluctant to receive pilgrims.
“The village is very
ordinary – there’s nothing spiritual there,” said Pawel. “In the home where
Father Jerzy lived, there’s one room that has been set apart as a kind of
museum, but all the items there are under a thick veil of dust. By the wall is
a small table, covered with a kind of plastic sheet. There was a small piece of
paper with handwriting on it, written by Father Jerzy’s brother. It said, Every
day near the table we were praying with our mother. There was a photo of that mother
as an old, tired woman. On the other side of that piece of paper was a
reliquary with Father Jerzy’s relics.”
“And that’s the answer,”
Pawel concluded, speaking of both stories. “The whole strength of that man, and
what we need today for our identity.”
What he meant was that
Father Jerzy became a figure of enormous historical significance for the Polish
nation and the Catholic Church – and indeed will soon be canonized – but it all
started there in a dull village in the middle of nowhere, with a faithful
family that prayed every day together.
Pawel said that when he
leads tour groups of students through the museum, in the room devoted to Father
Jerzy’s youth, he emphasizes that the future saint and national hero was a
hard-working student, but did not achieve high marks.
“When he was studying at
seminary, he barely passed his exams. He was trying to learn a lot, but he
simply wasn’t an intellectual,” said the researcher. “Students start to be
interested in the man because he was like many of them. Intellect is not what
it’s all about.”
“The answer to our
problems in modernity is not in the intellect,” Pawel continued. “The answer is
somewhere deeper, more profound. Father Jerzy’s strength was perfection in
human relations. He loved life. He loved people. It was really hard during the
Communist period to cultivate such simple values as honesty, and being kind
with others. That was an exam he passed with flying colors. He was constantly
challenged, but he constantly upheld his values, till the very end of his
life.”
It has been 35 years
since Father Jerzy’s murder, and two decades since Communism fell. Pawel sees a
change in the mentality of the museum’s visitors – a widening chasm between the
generations of Poles who come here.
Fewer and fewer people
remember Communism. For those who do, it’s [the priest’s] martyrdom that’s the
most important aspect of his story. It’s also a story of Polish nationalism.
For them, there’s no distinction between Polish national identity and the
Catholic faith. For younger people, though, it’s not so simple. We are trying
to find a new way to tell the story of the priest Popieluszko to them. We are
developing a narrative based on the most fundamental values, things like faith,
identity, and responsibility. The young people who don’t remember Communism,
they are coming for something else. They are looking for a guide in their
life.”
European pilgrims who
visit Father Jerzy’s grave and his museum live in a highly secular world. They
are typically looking for a guide to teach them how to be faithful in a godless
society. The Americans who come are often more devoted, but they’re also
searching, Pawel said.
“Everybody comes for
something different here, but the best thing is that they find it.”
On the fence separating
Father Jerzy’s gravesite from the street hang banners from Solidarity chapters
around Poland. Though he was not a member of the trade union, the priest’s life
and death is inseparable from Solidarity’s own.
“Father Jerzy lived in a
time when everything was politicized,” Pawel said. “The Church in Poland in
that time didn’t declare publicly its involvement with Solidarity. It wanted to
underline that they were separate things. Father Jerzy stood up in defense of
the people of Solidarity, of which he was an honorary member. He was considered
to be Solidarity’s chaplain.
The young priest faced
harsh accusations about his political associations both from within the
Communist regime and the Catholic Church. Once Cardinal Glemp questioned him
critically about his labors in the public sphere. Though Father Jerzy never
openly criticized the Church hierarchy, he confided to his diary that this
experience was even more difficult to endure than his interrogation by the
secret police.
The point is not that
Father Jerzy was not political. He certainly was. But he did not set out to be
political, and didn’t operate like a political person. Still, he had a
political effect.
“When we look at the
photos of his masses, and search the crowd, we see the faces of people who
later became the most important politicians in Poland,” Pawel said. “But Father
Jerzy never tried to create political networks.”
Once when laborers at the
Warsaw iron works went on strike, they invited Father Jerzy to say mass for
them. Said Pawel: “He was a simple man, they were simple men, so they
understand each other well.
“It wasn’t long after
that that martial law was imposed, and a lot of the men who participated in
that strike were sent to prison. Father Popieluszko supported them. He sent
them packages in prison. He defended them in his sermons. He went to their
court hearings, so he could look the judges right in the eye. These weren’t political
activities; this was just human relations.”
The young priest quickly
gained a reputation for being a man one could turn to for help. Perhaps more
importantly, he inspired those he helped to respond to the crisis within Polish
society by helping others. After the 1981 imposition of martial law, he began
celebrating what came to be called “masses for the Fatherland” – that is,
liturgies intended to ask God’s help for the suffering Polish nation. These
outdoor masses drew crowds in the tens of thousands. His sermons
“A kind of community
started to develop, of people who knew each other from these masses,” said
Pawel. “During his sermons, Father Jerzy said very simple things about freedom,
about solidarity as a value, the importance of human dignity — you know, really
the most basic things. And that’s why he was murdered: because a movement that
couldn’t be controlled by anyone was too dangerous for the communists. To be
honest, the Church even regarded him as hard to control.”
Here is a fragment from a
1983 sermon he gave:
Our Fatherland and
respect of human dignity must be the common objective for reconciliation. You
must unite in reconciliation in the spirit of love, but also in the spirit of
justice. As the Holy Father said five years ago, no love exists without
justice. Love is greater than justice and at the same time finds reassurance in
justice.
And for you, brothers,
who carry in your hearts paid-for hatred, let it be a time of reflection that
violence is not victorious, though it may triumph for a while. We have a proof
of that standing underneath the Cross. There too was violence and hatred for
truth. But the violence and hatred were defeated by the active love of Christ.
Pawel again emphasized
that Father Jerzy was not brilliant, but he had simple faith, deep decency, and
a gift for talking about the problems real people faced every day, in language
they could understand.
“When he was a kid, every
day before school he went to church. The closest church was four kilometers
[about 2.5 miles] away from home. In winter, it was still dark, and he would
strike one stone against another to drive away the wolves. If we think about
that story when we look at photographs of him celebrating mass for tens of
thousands of people, it is the same man: he’s simply brave, and he’s simply
devoted to the most rudimentary values. He believed them, and practiced them to
the very end.”
As the priest rose in
prominence and influence, the state began harassing him. He received anonymous
death threats. A brick with explosive materials attached was thrown through his
apartment window. The secret police bugged his flat, and stationed officers
outside his building, around the clock, for two years. They sabotaged his car’s
steering mechanism, hoping to cause him to die in an automobile crash. For a
time he struggled to sleep amid a barrage of phone calls in the middle of the
night, often carrying obscene messages.
The regime opened an
official investigation, and interrogated Father Jerzy many times. The
government-controlled media blasted him over his masses for the Fatherland.
“During one of sermons, he said please pray for me, because for the thirtieth
time, I’m going to be interrogated by the police,” said Pawel.
Eventually state
prosecutors filed charges against him. Father Jerzy stood accused of harming
the socialist nation through his religious work. Prosecutors said that he thus
exceeded the freedom of conscience guaranteed under law. The priest refused
this preposterous charge, and defended his faith.
Pawel said that today, if
we protect the gifts of faith, “they have enormous energy. He received them at
home. Today we have a big problem with that. Maybe that’s why people come here
– they are looking for the kind of education they should have received from
home, but didn’t.”
Father Jerzy was often
weak and suffering from ill health. Near the end of his life, he was
particularly exhausted. Cardinal Glemp asked him if he would like to go to Rome
to study – this as a way of getting him to a place of rest and safety. Even
though he believed that his murder was fast approaching, Father Jerzy declined
the offer of exit.
“He was suffering
terribly, but said that he simply could not abandon the people who trusted
him,” said Pawel. “He was not loyal to abstract ideals. He was loyal to the
people in his life. Pain is not a value, but fidelity itself sometimes causes
pain.”
Here is the last known
photograph of Father Jerzy Popieluszko:
Death came for him on the
night of October 19, 1984. Three secret police agents kidnapped him, beat him
severely, bound his hands and feet, tied a rock to his feet, and dumped him
into a reservoir. His body was discovered on October 30. Here’s what he looked
like:
See what they did to
Father Jerzy
Eventually the trio was
jailed for killing Father Jerzy, but later released as part of an amnesty.
Pawel told me that in his
work at the museum, he’s looking for new language to pass the experience of
Father Jerzy’s life to the post-communist generations. He finds that the
different generations today speak “totally different languages in a totally
different way.” A chasm is opening between Christians and the world, he said
(“And within the churches too,” I added).
Under Communism, it was
easier to talk because you knew where you stood, Pawel said. The oppression was
so harsh that it helped Christians form strong identities. He went on:
In my work, I’m trying to
find new language to pass that experience to the next generation. To start a
dialogue, we have to have a common anthropological base. Today we have a really
big problem with that, because we are speaking totally different languages in a
totally different way. We have no common base. There’s a profound break between
Christians and the world. The biggest problem is that under communism, such a
dialogue was far simpler. The oppression was so obvious that it helped to form
a strong identity.
But today? This is a much
more difficult question.
Father Jerzy’s life
offers us another way to see things, Pawel suggested. Consider that the priest
knew that his entire society was infiltrated by the Communist Party.
“The priest who was his
neighbor was a Communist informer,” Pawel said. “The priest who announced his
death right here in the church was an informer. It’s quite easy to understand
why Cardinal Glemp was so negative towards priest Popieluszko; the
information he got about Father Jerzy came from priests who were secretly
communist collaborators.”
All Poles had to live
with this reality. In the face of it, Father Jerzy taught (in Pawel’s
paraphrase): “You can’t worry about who’s an agent and who’s not an
agent. If you do, you will tear yourself apart as a community.”
Said Pawel:
There was one man who
came to to bring [Father Jerzy] a package. After that meeting, he stayed with
Father Jerzy for three years, until his death. He was an atheist, but he
started to be interested in church affairs, and he asked Father Jerzy something
about the Bible. Father Jerzy told him to buy the Bible, but now, in this
moment, to tell him how things are going in his family. When it comes to
survival, maybe what’s most important is simple fidelity: not by evangelizing
people directly, but by developing honest relations with one another – not
looking for whether one is good or bad, or judging them by their ideology.
Father Jerzy was constantly monitored by the secret police, who parked right in
front of his home. During the severely cold winters, he would bring them hot
tea to warm them up. Because they were people. That’s how he was.
I told Pawel that these
stories — in particular, contrasting Father Jerzy’s lack of intellectual
sophistication with his heroic goodness — teaches us something important. A lot
of us Christians think that the way to convert others is to make better
arguments. Good arguments are important, certainly, but when you see radical
virtue made incarnate in a figure like Jerzy Popieluszko, it’s a more powerful
witness to the truth of the faith.
Pawel began to talk about
“realism.” Before he came to work at the museum, he was the spokesman for the
Polish branch of Caritas, the international Catholic aid organization. He said:
In Poland, we had a
really big ideological mess about migrants from the East. Working with Caritas,
I met these people. And I was in Nepal doing work after the earthquake there,
and in Ukraine doing war relief. I have also been in a lot of centers helping
the homeless, and in the homes of single mothers and others.
Doing these things
solidified my convictions. We can think different things about life and death,
but what one needs to do is to visit a man just before his death, and talk to
him. In my office, we were visiting homeless people, people in a really poor
situation, to help them out. We had to know them. They’re people, not numbers.
Under Communism, people
were forced to confront reality. Today, it’s far more difficult. We can think a
lot, we can look up to important figures, but never live it out, never be
slapped across the face by life. You cannot deceive a man who has fallen,
because if he ever stands up, it’s because of real values — that is, values
that survive the contact with reality. Let’s say that we teach people about
good examples, but these example are merely theoretical — well, others will
propose alternative examples, and the people will not be able to make up their
minds.
Father Jerzy wasn’t a
monk living isolated from the world. His biggest talent was that he was
constantly with people. He didn’t isolate himself. He wrote in his diary, “I
would like to go somewhere for a walk, but I have to stay here in the flat,
because someone might come by for help.”
I would say that the test
field when the truths we proclaim are verified is human dignity, where the
discussion and theory ends, and real life starts. If we merely talk about
dignity, and don’t live it, it’s simply a lie. It’s not true. These days, man
now starts to become very theoretical. Our task is to convince people to
establish real contacts with other people, to meet people face to face. Go to
other people, like Father Jerzy Popieluszsko.
At the end of the museum
tour, here is the exit door, featuring a command Father Jerzy gave to his
followers, taken from a line of St. Paul’s:
“This is the part of the tour where I ask students what they think about what
they’ve just seen,” said Pawel. “So, what do you think?”
I didn’t take notes of
how I responded, of course. But this is what I said, or to be more precise,
what I wish I had said:
Father Jerzy became a
great leader of his nation, and is about to be canonized, because of the
courage with which he loved. He was not a clever political strategist, but a
simple priest whose understanding of what it meant to love God and his fellow
man. What his life tells me is that we don’t have to have it all sorted out in
terms of a political strategy in order to successfully confront the problems of
our time. It is enough to speak and to live the truth in love, without fear.
There isn’t necessarily a
clear-cut political program for us to follow. Father Jerzy had only the Gospel,
and his formation as a Catholic, from childhood. This taught him what it meant
to be human, and it taught him never to deny the image of God in every human
person he met — even the secret policemen. You can build a politics on that. In
fact, the only politics worth having is one that has defending human dignity at
its center.
This doesn’t tell you,
for example, if you should open your borders to migrants or not. But it does
tell you that migrants are fellow human beings, and must be responded to with
dignity and compassion.
Standing at the end of
the story of his life, my thoughts went back to Father Jerzy’s childhood, and
the image of that little Polish boy walking to mass through the morning
darkness, knocking stones together to keep the wolves away. He went to mass
because his mother and father, in their humble village home, taught him that
Jesus Christ was everything. And they taught him that not just as an
intellectual matter, but through regular prayer. In his path through life
towards unity with Christ, Jerzy Popieluszko walked through the valley of the shadow
of death, with only the steady rock of faith to keep the wolves at bay.
Eventually the wolves found him, beat him to death, and delivered his battered
corpse to the waters, tied to a rock.
And now, Jerzy
Popieluszko is about to be raised to the altar as a saint. All over Poland,
there are squares and other places bearing his name. Who are these men who
killed him? Where are the Communist wolves who tormented Poland? Most are dead,
and if they are remembered at all, it is with infamy. Upon the rock of his
confession of faith, Father Jerzy built his life, found his courage —
especially the courage to love those who persecuted him — and eventually,
because of that confession, died at the hands of wicked men who despised him
for his faith, and effectively stoned him.
There is a great mystery
here.
I thought about how much
I have struggled to convince people that my Benedict Option idea is not about
running to the woods to hide, but about taking on spiritual disciplines and
fellowship that give us the eyes to see clearly what Christ calls us to do in
this present darkness, and the strength to bear witness to that calling in the
public square, come what may. Father Jerzy is an extraordinary example of this.
If he had not been formed as a Christian from childhood praying with his family
around the table, and if his courage in faith had not been built into his heart
by those long walks to mass in the face of his fear of wolves, would Jerzy
Popieluszko have had the vision and the bravery to stand up to Communist tyranny
— and to do so without losing his conviction that even his Communist tormentors
weren’t wolves, deep down, but fellow human beings? And to inspire so many
others to live the same way?
Put another way: if Jerzy
Popieluszko had retreated into a purely private life as a Catholic, nobody
would have faulted him. Life was hard under Communism. As Pawel pointed out, it
was difficult to develop real virtue in a society that had been corrupted by a
false and evil ideology. But Jerzy Popieluzsko didn’t do that. He became a
martyr, and is now going to be a canonized saint. Here’s the thing: if it had
not been for that early formation, and if it had not been for his spiritual
discipline as a priest, he would not have been able to have accomplished any of
that. He would have lived and died as an ordinary man — maybe a priest, but an
ordinary one. There’s no shame in that. It’s how most of us will live and die.
But there’s no glory either, in this life or the next.
Every country is full of
politicians and others living out their convictions in the public square. But
there aren’t many Jerzy Popieluzskos. If the Christian churches are going to
produce saints and heroes like that in a society filled with corruption and
confusion — more confusion, it must be said, than existed under Communism (“It
was easier to see the evil back then,” an old Pole told me), then we will have
to be far more intentional and countercultural in our habits of formation
within our families, our churches, and our Christian institutions.
Later, at lunch, my
friend and interpreter Lukasz, who is a practicing Catholic, marveled over what
we had just heard. He was born in 1997, and had grown up with the story of
Father Jerzy Popieluzsko as a stock narrative in his education. But Father
Jerzy only really came alive to him that morning. Reflecting on how it was that
until yesterday morning, Father Jerzy had been nothing more than a historical
figure to him, rather than someone who can teach him how to live faithfully
right here, right now.
“They only taught me
about how he died,” said Lukasz. “They never taught me about how he lived.”
About The Author
Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher is a
contributing editor at The American Conservative and was senior
editor at TAC for twelve years. A veteran of three decades of magazine and
newspaper journalism, he has also written three New York Times bestsellers—Live
Not By Lies, The Benedict Option, and The Little Way of Ruthie Leming—as
well as Crunchy Cons and How Dante Can Save Your Life. Dreher
lives in Budapest, Hungary.
SOURCE : https://www.theamericanconservative.com/fr-jerzy-popieluzsko-poland-long-road/
Obraz
beatyfikacyjny Jerzy Popiełuszko Malował Zbigniew Kotyłło Obraz wyłoniony drogą
konkursu. Brał udział w uroczystościach beatyfikacyjnych Ks. Jerzego. Obecnie
Światynia Opatrzności Bożej w Warszawie.
Beato Giorgio (Jerzy)
Popieluszko Sacerdote e martire
Okopy, Polonia, 14
settembre 1947 - Wloclawek, Polonia, 19 ottobre 1984
Don Jerzy Popieluszko
nacque il 14 settembre 1947 a Okopy provincia di Bialystok. Fu ordinato
sacerdote dal cardinal Stefan Wyszynsky il 28 maggio 1972 a Varsavia. Destinato
alla parrocchia di San Stanislao Kostka, oltre al lavoro parrocchiale, svolgeva
il suo ministero tra gli operai organizzando conferenze, incontri di preghiera
anche per medici ed infermieri, assisteva gli ammalati, i poveri, i
perseguitati e insieme a Don Teofilo Bogucki eseguiva celebrazioni mensili di
Sante Messe con predica per la Patria. Il 19 ottobre 1984 di ritorno da un
servizio pastorale da Bydgosszcz a Gorsk vicino a Torun è stato rapito da tre
funzionari del Ministero dell’Interno e assassinato. La sua tomba, che si trova
accanto la chiesa di San Stanislao Kostka a Varsavia, è meta continua di
pellegrinaggi di fedeli provenienti dalla Polonia e dal mondo intero.
Il 14 giugno 1987 papa
Giovanni Paolo II ha pregato sulla tomba di Padre Jerzy. Il 6 giugno 2010 è
stato beatificato sotto il pontificato di Benedetto XVI.
Già a 19 anni lo accusano
di “atteggiamento ribelle”: benché seminarista, gli hanno fatto il militare con
lo scopo di “fargli cambiare idea”, ma nonostante il continuo lavaggio del
cervello non sono riusciti a piegare quel ragazzo, taciturno e serio, che fin
da ragazzo vuole farsi prete e che non ha cambiato idea neppure dopo le
angherie e le pressioni subite sotto naia. Nato in Polonia nel 1947, viene ordinato
prete nel 1972 dal card. Wyszyński e sembra quasi un segno del destino,
visto che tra un po’ saranno entrambi alla gloria degli altari. Per alcuni anni
vaga da una parrocchia all’altra di Varsavia, con incarichi temporanei che
tuttavia “lasciano il segno”, soprattutto tra gli universitari: sembra che quel
prete, timido e di poche parole, con una salute vacillante che lo limita anche
nel ministero, si riscaldi improvvisamente e si trasformi quando si trova a
contatto con giovani e poveri, con cui riesce a stabilire subito un filo
diretto. Nel giugno 1980 viene assegnato come sacerdote residente alla
parrocchia di san Stanislao Kostka, sul cui territorio si trova la grande
acciaieria “Huta Warszawa”. Il 28 agosto il primate di Polonia gli chiede di
andare dagli operai in sciopero che chiedono un sacerdote per la Messa: diventa
così il cappellano di Solidarnosc della Huta. Oltre al lavoro parrocchiale si
trova dunque a lavorare tra gli operai organizzando conferenze, incontri di
preghiera, assistendo ammalati, poveri, perseguitati. Insieme al suo parroco
inizia a celebrare ogni mese una Messa per la patria, che raccoglie migliaia di
persone: operai, intellettuali, artisti e anche persone lontane dalla
fede. È questo suo andare “verso le periferie” ed il suo trasformarsi in
“ponte” con tutte le categorie di persone a far crescere il sospetto delle
autorità nei suoi confronti. Minacce più o meno velate al suo indirizzo,
addirittura un esplosivo gettatogli in camera, obbligano gli operai a
procurargli una spontanea e volontaria scorta che lo accompagna nei suoi vari
spostamenti. Padre Jerzy sa benissimo di essere spiato in ogni movimento ed in
ogni suo discorso: agenti segreti si celano tra quanti ascoltano le sue
prediche e addirittura tra i suoi più stretti collaboratori: un sacerdote e
quattro laici a lui molto vicini risulteranno essere informatori della polizia.
Eppure non una sua sola parola, e neppure un suo gesto, risulteranno
incitazione alla violenza: nelle sue omelie si limita a chiedere il ripristino delle
libertà civili e di Solidarnosc. “Poiché ci è stata tolta la libertà di parola,
ascoltiamo la voce del nostro cuore e della nostra coscienza a vivere nella
verità dei figli di Dio, non nella menzogna imposta dal regime”, ripete senza
stancarsi. E non conclude mai le “Messe per la patria” senza chiedere ai fedeli
di pregare “per coloro che sono venuti qui per dovere professionale”, mettendo
così in imbarazzo gli spioni del servizio di sicurezza che stanno registrando
le sue parole. Temuto dalle autorità per l’ascendente che esercita sul popolo,
viene arrestato due volte nel 1983 e nella prima metà del 1984, interrogato
tredici volte dalla polizia, sottoposto a continua sorveglianza, al punto che
il cardinale Glemp gli propone di “cambiare aria” e di trasferirsi per studio a
Roma. Si rifiuta, pur sapendo a cosa sta andando incontro e malgrado un
incidente stradale, organizzato per farlo fuori, dal quale esce fortunosamente
incolume. Durante l’ultima celebrazione religiosa del 19 ottobre 1984 invita a
“chiedere di essere liberi dalla paura, dal terrore, ma soprattutto dal
desiderio di vendetta. Dobbiamo vincere il male con il bene e mantenere intatta
la nostra dignità di uomini, per questo non possiamo fare uso della violenza”.
Alcune ore dopo viene sequestrato da tre ufficiali del servizio di sicurezza:
lo ritroveranno “incaprettato”, il successivo 30 ottobre nel lago di Wloclawek
e scopriranno che gli hanno maciullato la mandibola e sfondato il cranio a
manganellate. “Infondeva coraggio ai fedeli, non sobillava rivoluzioni”,
afferma il vescovo di Varsavia, riconoscendo che non ha “mai oltrepassato
le sue competenze di sacerdote e neppure ridotto la Chiesa e il suo messaggio a
strumento di lotta politica”. La gente lo aveva già capito da un pezzo: sia il
mezzo milione di persone che hanno partecipato al suo funerale, sia i 18
milioni che in questi anni sono sfilate davanti alla sua tomba. Ora anche la
Chiesa lo ha riconosciuto ufficialmente, proclamando beato Padre Jerzy
Popiełuszko nel 2010, alla presenza della sua anziana mamma.
Autore: Gianpiero Pettiti
Era nato il 23 settembre
1947, a Okopy, un piccolo villaggio tra le città di Augustow e Bialystok, lungo
la strada che attraversava i prati acquitrinosi dell’ampia vallata del Narew,
in Polonia ai confini con l’allora Unione Sovietica. Il suo nome “Okopy”,
significa trincea. Era abitato da famiglie di umili contadini, dalle mani
ruvide e dal cuore ardente. In una di queste famiglie, quella di Vladislaw e di
Marianna, quel giorno nasceva Jerzy Popielusko, un bambino fragile, dagli occhi
dolci.
Il servo di Cristo
Papà e mamma danno a
Jerzy e agli altri tre figli una forte educazione cristiana: Gesù da amare come
Maria Santissima, sua e nostra Madre, lo ha amato; ogni scelta di vita come un
sì a Dio, totale; lo spirito di sacrificio nelle asprezze della vita che non
mancano mai, sostenuto dal Rosario alla Madonna. Jerzy era un ragazzo sereno e
felice. Come tanti giovani della Polonia, amava la Madonna e scrutava quali
fossero per lui i disegni di Dio. Frequentò la scuola a Suchowola, una località
presso Okopy. Una giovinezza intessuta di studi, di lavoro nei campi, di
preghiera, di discussioni appassionate con gli amici, con lo sguardo attento
agli avvenimenti della sua patria, oppressa dai comunisti di Stalin, eppure
così libera in Cristo. In casa, da bambino, aveva sentito parlare del loro
Primate, l’Arcivescovo di Varsavia, cardinale Stefano Wyszynski, che mai
nessuno aveva fatto tacere, innamorato di Cristo e di Maria, Madre della
Polonia martire. Lo sapeva, Jerzy ventenne, che soltanto Gesù, sua Madre e la
Chiesa Cattolica, meritano fiducia e dedizione.
A vent’anni, lo
chiamarono a prestare servizio militare. Dovunque, ma ancora più sotto i
comunisti, è un’esperienza delle più dure. Non era facile, tuttavia, piegare
alla volontà altrui un giovane come Jerzy. Nella caserma di Bartoszyce si
distinse per il coraggio della sua fede e della sua testimonianza. Un giorno,
un ufficiale lo vide con il rosario tra le mani, mentre pregava la Madonna. Lo
derise, lo rimproverò, lo minacciò: «Buttalo a terra e calpestalo. Se non
schiaccerai quello strumento, io schiaccerò te». Jerzy si rifiutò. Fu percosso
duramente e rinchiuso per un mese in cella di punizione. Non si piegò, anzi la
sua fede, come quella dei suoi amici cattolici – molti erano seminaristi –, né
uscì più ardente, più gagliarda.
Già, nel 1965, era
entrato nel seminario di Varsavia, quando da noi, nell’Occidente libero e
assetato spesso solo di piacere, i seminari cominciavano a svuotarsi (oggi sono
vuoti), i martiri dell’Est Europa continuavano a testimoniare Cristo, e i
giovani di quelle terre oppresse dal comunismo numerosi salivano l’altare come
sacerdoti di Cristo! Nel 1972, don Jerzy Popielusko, con il cuore in festa, era
consacrato sacerdote dal cardinal Wynszynski. Da quel giorno, 28 maggio 1972,
non ebbe altro sogno che quello di identificarsi con Gesù Sacerdote per la
gloria di Dio e la salvezza dei fratelli.
Fu destinato alla
parrocchia di Zabki, un quartiere periferico di Varsavia, poi alla parrocchia
del Bambino Gesù di Zoliborz, dove un giorno era passato anche san Stanislao
Kostka; poi ancora alla parrocchia universitaria di Sant’Anna. Infine don Jerzy
si ammalò. Dopo una lunga degenza all’ospedale, il cardinal Wyszynski lo
destinava alla pastorale degli ospedali nella sua arcidiocesi. Fragile nel
fisico, don Jerzy non si arrendeva mai: sempre sulla breccia, mobilitato da
Gesù, sempre con una nuova iniziativa di evangelizzazione e di carità. Sentiva
ciò che noi spesso non sentiamo più: di dover moltiplicare talenti ed energie
per portare Gesù ai fratelli, a questo povero mondo.
Nello stesso tempo,
lavorava a Varsavia, nella parrocchia di San Stanislao: né parroco né
viceparroco, aiutava nelle Confessioni, nelle omelie, visitava i malati. Era a
suo agio con tutti e sapeva mettere a proprio agio tutti. Studiava, pregava,
parlava con tutti, sempre attento ai fatti della sua terra, della Chiesa, in
Polonia e nel mondo.
Il 16 ottobre 1978, festa
di santa Edvige, regina della Polonia, mentre il sole tramontava, una notizia
folgorante giunse a Varsavia: il cardinal Karol Wojtyla, arcivescovo di
Cracovia, era stato eletto papa, con il nome di Giovanni Paolo II: “Jan Pawel”!
Il 22 ottobre, domenica piena di sole, il giovane Pontefice aveva gridato al
mondo: «Aprite, anzi spalancate le porte a Cristo! Permettete a Cristo di
parlare all’uomo. Lui solo ha parole di vita, sì, di vita eterna!».
Per don Jerzy era
l’inizio di una più intensa dedizione a Gesù e alla sua Chiesa. Ora dove lo
voleva Dio? Dove lo mandava Maria, la Regina della Polonia fedele?
Il testimone di Cristo
E venne l’estate di
Solidarnosc. Agosto 1980. A Danzica, a Stettino, a Huta Warszawa, gli operai
delle officine incrociarono le braccia davanti ai dirigenti comunisti per
rivendicare la loro dignità, la dignità dell’uomo calpestata nelle loro
esistenze. Gli operai di Huta Warszawa chiesero un prete che stesse in fabbrica
con loro. Il cardinal Wyszynski mandò don Jerzy. Aveva solo 33 anni, ma era un
capo. In mezzo agli operai celebrava la Messa, li confessava, li ascoltava,
calmava e indirizzava gli animi, era un vero padre.
Noi, gente
dell’Occidente, abbiamo visto con stupore quegli operai in sciopero, raccolti
attorno ai loro preti in preghiera, in ginocchio a confessare i loro peccati,
stretti intorno al crocifisso, appeso ai cancelli dei cantieri di Lenin! Era
una nuova “rivoluzione proletaria” – quella vera – che rifiutava il comunismo
ateo e oppressore dell’uomo, perché essa scaturiva dal Cuore del “divino
Operaio” di Nazareth, Gesù, Liberatore unico dell’uomo dal peccato e dalla
morte e Datore della vita divina, la vera Vita.
Era difficile la missione
di don Jerzy tra gli operai in quel momento storico, ma egli non si arrese,
neppure dopo il 13 dicembre 1981, giorno del “colpo di stato” del generale
Jaruzelski, quando la Polonia sembrò precipitare di nuovo nel più cupo inverno,
per causa di coloro che a parole sono il partito operaio, ma in pratica sparano
con i fucili alla schiena degli operai, come avvenne proprio in Polonia nel
dicembre 1970! Ma è nell’ora difficile che la testimonianza non solo è
possibile, ma è più splendida: essa è martirio e al martirio spesso conduce.
Così aveva insegnato Gesù.
Nel febbraio 1982, nella
parrocchia di San Stanislao, toccò a don Jerzy continuare la celebrazione della
Messa mensile “per la patria”, alla quale prese a partecipare presto tanta
gente. I primi furono gli operai di Huta Warszawa, poi non si poté più dire da
dove venisse tanta gente. Don Jerzy parlava chiaro: «Tutto ciò che è grande e
bello nasce dalla sofferenza, dal dolore, dalle lacrime e dal sangue del 1970
[anno dell’insurrezione di dicembre, repressa dai comunisti con numerosi
morti], è sorto un nuovo impeto patriottico» (giugno 1982). «Il fondamento
della nostra servitù sta nel fatto che accettiamo ancora il dominio della
menzogna, che non la smascheriamo e non protestiamo ogni giorno contro di essa.
Il coraggio di testimoniare la Verità è la via maestra che conduce alla
libertà» (ottobre 1982).
Ci furono delle
provocazioni. Si tentò di trasformare le riunioni di preghiera in
manifestazioni politiche. Non riuscirono. Una parola di don Jerzy bastava. Un
giorno una mano cattiva buttò un sasso nella camera di don Jerzy: da qual
momento gli operai si prestarono a fargli da guardie del corpo. Nel 1983 si
tentò di incarcerarlo, ma non ci riuscirono, tutto era limpido in lui.
Che cosa diceva don
Jerzy? Parlava di Dio, della Madonna, della gente sofferente. Diceva che l’odio
è sconosciuto al Cattolicesimo. Quando la chiesa veniva circondata dalla
polizia con gli idranti, ripeteva: «Scambiatevi un segno di pace e non
lasciatevi mai guidare dall’odio...». «Bisogna aver paura solo di tradire
Cristo per alcune monete di una sterile tranquillità». Le parole forti delle
sue omelie erano citazioni del Magistero del Papa e della Chiesa.
Il martire di Cristo
«Era l’uomo più affabile
del mondo – dice di lui un operaio –. Ma ci parlava come uno che deve guidare e
non farsi guidare. Nelle ore più buie ci fece sentire forti. All’altare
affermava di essere pronto a dare la vita per la Verità e la libertà vera». Zelante,
pieno dello Spirito di Dio, innamorato di Gesù Cristo – testimonia il suo
parroco don Bogucki – non incitava all’odio e alla vendetta. Invitava tutti
all’amore e al perdono».
Benché fragile di salute,
don Jerzy era instancabile, mobilitato dentro dalla sua grande affezione a Gesù
e sostenuto dalla Madonna: popolarissimo in tutta la Polonia, lo chiamavano da
ogni lato a parlare di Gesù con la sua parola divina, convinta, calda,
suadente... ma uno come lui, come i martiri antichi, doveva essere tolto di
mezzo.
Il 19 ottobre 1984, in
viaggio a Bydgoszcz. Nella notte fonda, in un luogo dove la strada passava in
un bosco, “alcuni” lo rapirono con mano sacrilega. Quello che capitò a don
Jerzy, lo rivela il suo corpo martoriato, ritrovato nelle gelide acque del lago
Wlockawek: lividi terribili dappertutto, le mani coperte di ferite, la bocca
maciullata, il cuoio capelluto strappato, il ventre dilaniato. Tutto simile al
Martire divino del Calvario e ai martiri dilaniati dalle belve nel circo dei
primi secoli cristiani.
Dal 3 novembre 1984, don
Jerzy Popielusko riposa nella chiesa della sua parrocchia, presso l’altare dove
ogni giorno innalzava al cielo Gesù Vittima d’amore: ostia con Gesù-Ostia. I
suoi assassini, arrestati poco dopo, furono condannati ad alcuni anni di
carcere. Nell’aula del tribunale, la sua mamma si alzò a chiedere una cosa sola
ai giudici: «Abbiate pietà di coloro che hanno ucciso mio figlio. Lui farebbe
così» (solo la Chiesa Cattolica ha persone come don Jerzy e sua madre!).
Il 6 giugno 2010 la
Chiesa ha elevato con la solenne beatificazione il martire don Jerzy
Popielusko, di 37 anni appena, alla gloria degli altari. Che il suo sangue,
intriso di fedeltà alla Verità, di dedizione totale a Gesù e alla sua Chiesa,
spinga molti giovani d’oggi a fare di se stessi un’offerta viva, un sacrificio
di amore a Colui per il quale più che mai vale donare la vita.
Autore: Paolo Risso
Note: Per
approfondire: www.popieluszko.net.pl
SOURCE : http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/91720
Church
of Mother of Sorrow in Poznań, Symbolic grave of Jerzy Popiełuszko
Jerzy Popiełuszko
(1947-1984)
Beatificazione:
- 06 giugno 2010
- Papa Benedetto
XVI
Ricorrenza:
- 19 ottobre
Jerzy Popiełuszko martire del comunismo
Sacerdote diocesano,
martire, fu ucciso da funzionari del ministero dell'interno della Repubblica
Popolare di Polonia a causa della sua nota ostilità al regime
“Dobbiamo vincere il male con il bene e mantenere intatta la nostra dignità di uomini, per questo non possiamo fare uso della violenza"
Jerzy Popiełuszko nacque
il 14 settembre 1947 a Okopy provincia di Bialystok, nel nord-est della
Polonia, era stato ordinato sacerdote dal cardinale Stefan Wyszynsky nel 1972.
Per suo stesso incarico a
partire dal 1980 svolgeva il ruolo di cappellano del sindacato autonomo
Solidarność. Nelle omelie che teneva regolarmente per le “Messe per la Patria”,
in una chiesa di Varsavia, ascoltate da migliaia di fedeli, non mancava di
difendere con coraggio la libertà religiosa e quella di opinione, i diritti
umani e la giustizia, criticando il regime.
Durante l’ultima
celebrazione il 19 ottobre 1984, don Jerzy aveva invitato i presenti a
“chiedere di essere liberi dalla paura, dal terrore, ma soprattutto dal
desiderio di vendetta. Dobbiamo vincere il male con il bene - aveva esortato -
e mantenere intatta la nostra dignità di uomini, per questo non possiamo fare
uso della violenza”.
Poche ore dopo don Jerzy
veniva rapito da tre funzionari del ministero dell’Interno, chiuso nel
bagagliaio di un’automobile, picchiato selvaggiamente e torturato. Quindi
gettato, forse ancora vivo, nelle acque del fiume Vistola. Aveva 37 anni.
Il suo cadavere venne
ritrovato il 30 ottobre successivo e la notizia della sua tragica morte scosse
profondamente l'intera Polonia.
Mezzo milione di persone
parteciparono al suo funerale, oltre 18 milioni quelle che, in questi anni,
sono sfilate davanti alla sua tomba a Varsavia.
SOURCE : https://www.causesanti.va/it/santi-e-beati/jerzy-popieluszko.html
Statue
of Jerzy Popiełuszko in Opole plac katedralny
VARSAVIENSIS
Beatificationis seu
Declarationis Martyrii
(† 19 Octobris 1984)
Decretum super Martyrio
«Dio mi manda ad annunciare il Vangelo e curare le ferite dei cuori doloranti» (cf. Is 61,1).
Le parole dell’antico
profeta di Israele, già fatte proprie da Gesù nella sinagoga di Nazareth,
furono il programma della vita sacerdotale del Servo di Dio Jerzy Popiełuszko:
scritte da lui in occasione della prima celebrazione eucaristica, costituirono
la motivazione ultima della sua suprema testimonianza al Signore.
Il Servo di Dio era nato
il 14 settembre 1947 ad Okopy nei pressi di Suchowola in Polonia, da un
famiglia di contadini di tradizione cristiana. Battezzato con il nome di
Alfons, in seguito lo cambierà con quello di Jerzy Aleksander. Guidato dal
desiderio di diventare sacerdote, entrò nel seminario diocesano di Varsavia, ma
trascorso appena un anno dall’inizio della formazione filosofico-teologica,
dovette interromperla per svolgere il servizio militare. Il biennio vissuto
nell’esercito fu la prima importante prova della sua vocazione, quando dovette
affrontare persecuzioni a causa delle sue convinzioni religiose. Dopo la
ripresa degli studi, il 28 maggio 1972 venne ordinato presbitero.
Al giovane sacerdote fu affidato
l’ufficio di vicario parrocchiale, che svolse successivamente in più comunità.
Venne pure incaricato della pastorale degli operatori sanitari e quindi degli
universitari. I Superiori, accortisi che la salute del Servo di Dio andava
deteriorandosi, lo sollevarono dal compito di vicario, destinandolo, come
residente, presso la parrocchia di Santo Stanislao Kostka, nel quartiere
Żoliborz di Varsavia.
In questo periodo, in un
clima particolare di entusiasmo creatosi dopo l’elezione al soglio pontificio
del Servo di Dio Giovanni Paolo II, ed in pari tempo di tentativi di rinascita
spirituale e democratica della nazione accompagnati dall’azione del movimento
sindacale d’ispirazione cattolica da poco costituito, egli entrò in contatto
con il mondo operaio, anzi, senza volerlo, ne divenne una guida autorevole e
riconosciuta, conservando sempre la sua identità sacerdotale e difendendo
l’indole pastorale del suo ministero. Lo continuò lo stesso, pur in forme
diverse e conscio della gravità del momento, quando le autorità statali
comuniste introdussero lo stato di guerra (1981-1983) per soffocare il processo
di rinascita, a cui seguivano arresti in massa, rigide restrizioni ed
annullamento di diritti da poco riconosciuti. Una particolare espressione del
suo insegnamento di quell’attività furono le “Messe per la patria” celebrate da
lui, che raccoglievano migliaia di fedeli provenienti sia da Varsavia che da
città lontane.
Nel suo ministero si
evidenziò una straordinaria sensibilità pastorale verso i problemi delle
persone sofferenti, avvilite, travolte dagli sbagli, disperate. Egli seppe
prendersene cura amorevolmente ed aiutarle a risollevarsi nello spirito
del rinnovamento evangelico. Fu apostolo e ministro instancabile del sacramento
della riconciliazione. Egli restituiva ai fedeli la speranza di vincere il male
con il bene e suscitava un nuovo entusiasmo nella vita di fede. Tutta
quest’opera al servizio delle Chiesa e dell’uomo fu improntata dalla
spiritualità sacerdotale forte, dall’ascetica della croce e dalla profonda
devozione mariana ereditata in famiglia.
Come reazione alla sua
attività pastorale, le autorità comuniste inscenarono nei suoi confronti
un’intensa campagna di diffamazione e di repressioni ed infine accusandolo di
attività illegali a carattere politico, – per coprire l’odio alla fede che ne
stava dietro – a cui seguirono provocazioni da parte della polizia e passi
giudiziari. Egli riceveva lettere minatorie, telefonate di turpiloquio e
minacce. Essendo consapevole che continuando il suo ministero pastorale avrebbe
rischiato la vita, ripeteva: “Io non posso abbandonare questa gente, che
attraverso la mia voce, ascolta la dottrina della Chiesa, e pensare solo a me
stesso. Devo rimanere con loro fino alla fine”. Degli ultimi giorni della sua
vita si ricordano le sue parole: “Ho superato la barriera del terrore, non ho
più paura. Sono pronto a tutto. Ho confidato in Dio”. Con questo stesso spirito
proseguì la sua opera pastorale fino alle ultime ore di vita.
Il 13 ottobre 1984 fallì
un primo tentativo di colpire il Servo di Dio, ma il 19 seguente fu rapito da
tre funzionari del Ministero degli Interni e venne picchiato selvaggiamente,
sino a subire la morte quello stesso giorno. Il suo corpo, appesantito da una
zavorra di sassi, fu gettato nel fiume Vistola. Il timore di una rivolta
popolare, tuttavia, spinse le Autorità a dar inizio alle indagini e, dopo
l’arresto degli assassini, il 30 ottobre il cadavere fu ritrovato. Al funerale
del Servo di Dio parteciparono migliaia di fedeli e nacque spontaneamente
un’indiscutibile fama martyrii che è andata progressivamente
consolidandosi e diffondendosi.
In forza di questa fama
fu istruita presso la Curia Arcivescovile di Varsavia dall’8 febbraio 1997
all’8 febbraio 2001 l’Inchiesta Diocesana, la cui validità giuridica è stata
riconosciuta da questa Congregazione delle Cause dei Santi con il Decreto del
14 dicembre 2001. Il 20 gennaio 2009 si è svolto il Congresso Peculiare dei
Consultori Teologi, che ha riconosciuto la consistenza degli elementi materiale
e formale del martirio. Questo esito positivo è stato confermato dagli
Eminentissimi ed Eccellentissimi Cardinali e Vescovi riuniti in Sessione
Ordinaria il 1° dicembre 2009, essendo Ponente della Causa l’Em. mo Card.
Stanislaw Ryłko, Presidente del Pontificio Consiglio per i Laici.
De hisce omnibus rebus,
referente subscripto Archiepiscopo Praefecto, certior factus, Summus Pontifex
Benedictus XVI, vota Congregationis de Causis Sanctorum excipiens rataque
habens, hodierno die declaravit Constare de martyrio eiusque causa Servi
Dei Georgii Popiełuszko, Sacerdotis dioecesani, in casu et ad effectum de quo
agitur.
Hoc autem decretum
publici iuris fieri et in acta Congregationis de Causis Sanctorum Summus
Pontifex referri mandavit.
Datum Romae, die 19 mensis Decembris A. D. 2009.
+ ANGELUS AMATO, S. D. B.
Archiep. tit. Silensis
Praefectus
+ MICHAËL DI RUBERTO
Archiep. tit. Biccarensis
a Secretis
SOURCE : https://www.causesanti.va/it/santi-e-beati/jerzy-popieluszko.html
Izba pamięci księdza Jerzego
Popieluszki w Suchowoli
Memory room (a small museum) of Jerzy
Popiełuszko, Suchowola, Poland
Marianna Popiełuszko
racconta il martirio di don Jerzy (Prima parte)
La fede profonda di una donna
che ha visto suo figlio morire per Cristo
Varsavia, 06 Marzo
2013 (Zenit.org) Wlodzimierz
Redzioch | 604 hits
Si racconta che quando
Giovanni Paolo II andò a pregare sulla sua tomba disse: “Come Cristo il suo
sangue ha salvato l’Europa”. Stiamo parlando di Jerzy Popiełuszko, il
beato sacerdote polacco che sapeva fare solo opere di bene.
La sua vicenda è
esemplare: ha predicato e testimoniato il bene fino a quando due sicari del
regime comunista non l’hanno torturato e ucciso selvaggiamente.
Per conoscere meglio la
storia e le caratteristiche di questo santo moderno, Włodzimierz
Rędzioch ha intervistato la mamma Marianna.
Una parte di questa
intervista è stata pubblicata su L’Osservatore Romano del 5 marzo.
ZENIT la pubblica per intero.
***
Marianna ha gli occhi
stanchi: stanchi dei suoi 92 anni; stanchi di più di 70 anni del duro lavoro in
campagna e in casa; stanchi delle lacrime versate per i suoi morti (durante la
seconda guerra mondiale i russi ammazzarono il più piccolo dei suoi fratelli;
nel 1953 morì tra le sue braccia la figlioletta Edvige di due anni; nel 1984 i
servizi segreti del regime comunista polacco fecero morire suo figlio
sacerdote; morì improvvisamente anche la sua giovane nuora, lasciando orfani
tre bambini per i quali divenne la seconda mamma; nel 2002 morì, dopo 60 anni
di matrimonio, anche suo marito). Ma negli occhi di questa donna minuta e
apparentemente fragile, ma forte di spirito, non c’è disperazione, al contrario
ci sono la pace e la serenità che vengono dalla convinzione che “le gioie e le
sofferenze vengono da Dio e Dio sa che cosa è meglio per ogni uomo”.
Malgrado la sua età non
ha neanche paura della morte perché con la morte “la vita non finisce ma si
trasforma”.
Una donna semplice, che
ha svolto il mestiere di contadina per tutta la sua esistenza e ha affrontato i
problemi e drammi personali con la straordinaria saggezza evangelica che le
veniva da una fede vissuta profondamente.
Marianna ha vissuto come
se avesse preso per motto della sua esistenza una filastrocca conosciuta e
ripetuta dall’infanzia: “Amare la gente, amare Dio: ecco la strada dritta per
il paradiso. Ama con il cuore e con le opere: sarai con gli angeli nel
paradiso” (in polacco questi versi fanno rima).
Per incontrare questa
anziana donna – oggi nota come madre del beato p. Jerzy Popiełuszko – sono
andato in un remoto angolo del Nord-Est della Polonia, vicino alla frontiera
con la Lituania, a circa 200 chilometri da Varsavia.
Marianna Gniedziejko –
questo era il suo cognome da nubile - è nata lì, nel lontano 1920, a Grodzisko,
un piccolo villaggio della sconfinata pianura del centro dell’Europa che,
secoli fa, fu coperta dalla grande foresta che si estendeva dalla Germania alla
Russia (i cartografi hanno calcolato che proprio qui si trova il centro
geografico del nostro continente).
I Gniedziejko erano una
famiglia molto religiosa, attaccata alla Chiesa e alle tradizioni, e
patriottica: lo zio di Marianna, Rafał Kalinowski - condannato dal regime
zarista al confine in Siberia, si fece carmelitano scalzo - è stato beatificato
nel 1983 e canonizzato nel 1991 (perciò p. Jerzy diceva: “Abbiamo un santo in
famiglia”).
Ogni aspetto della vita
quotidiana era legato alla preghiera o a qualche cerimonia religiosa. Marianna,
anche quando frequentava la scuola elementare, doveva aiutare la famiglia,
lavorando in campagna. Da piccola si ammalò di tifo e per curarla i genitori
dovettero vendere una mucca; per la famiglia fu un grosso sacrificio.
Oggi scherza, che da
allora non si ammala più e non frequenta i medici. Nel 1942 sposò Władysław
Popiełuszko, un uomo bello ed alto, di dieci anni più grande di lei e andò ad
abitare a casa sua nel vicino villaggio di Okopy. La famiglia di Popiełuszko era
una famiglia di agricoltori (avevano 17 ettari di terreno). Purtroppo, quando
finì la guerra e si instaurò il regime comunista, la vita dei contadini che
lavoravano sulla propria terra non fu facile: i comunisti costringevano ogni
famiglia a cedere allo Stato una parte del raccolto, perciò – spiega Marianna –
i Popiełuszko non soffrirono di fame ma dovettero ridurre le loro esigenze al
minimo.
Nella casa paterna ad
Okopy è nato nel 1947 il loro terzo figlio, il futuro beato (prima era la
figlia Teresa, secondo il figlio Józef). La mia conversazione con la signora
Marianna comincia proprio con questo
ricordo.
Si ricorda come è nato
don Jerzy?
Marianna Popiełuszko:
Ovviamente mi ricordo. Il parto cominciò quando la sera del 14 settembre – era
la domenica dell’Esaltazione della Croce - sono andata a mungere le mucche.
Sono riuscita a tornare a casa dove fortunatamente si trovava mia madre che era
arrivata in previsione del parto. Lo stesso parto non fu difficile ma in
conseguenza di esso ebbi forti dolori alla testa e per qualche giorno persi la
vista. Per questo motivo non potei andare in chiesa per il suo battesimo.
Nel libro dei battesimi
della parrocchia di Suchowola, si vede che il futuro p. Jerzy ha ottenuto al
battesimo il nome Alfons...
Marianna Popiełuszko: Ho
scelto io questo nome per lui. Ogni volta, quando ero incinta, iniziavo a
cercare i nomi per il bambino per fargli avere un buon santo patrono. Ho scelto
questo nome a maggio, quando a casa lessi qualche cosa sulla vita del sacerdote
Sant’Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori. Mio figlio ha usato questo nome fino ai primi
anni del seminario; invece a casa lo chiamavamo affettuosamente Alek.
Perché suo figlio, da
seminarista, ha cambiato il suo nome in Jerzy (Giorgio)?
Marianna Popiełuszko: A
Varsavia, dove studiava, il nome “Alfons” era una brutta parola, significava
"pappone" e veniva utilizzata per descrivere una persona che si
occupa di sfruttamento della prostituzione. Così, con il permesso dei superiori
del seminario, mio figlio cambiò il suo nome in Jerzy. Io non ho protestato
perché ormai era adulto.
Torniamo all'infanzia.
Come era Alek da giovane?
Marianna Popiełuszko: Era
un bambino esile e delicato. Non ho avuto problemi con lui perché era
obbediente, laborioso e paziente. Gli piaceva stare con la gente ed era aperto.
Preferiva leggere piuttosto che lavorare nei campi (i nostri figli andavano a
scuola e dovevano fare i compiti, ma ci aiutavano anche in campagna). A scuola
era un bravo studente e riceveva dei premi. Una volta il parroco mi disse:
“Questo ragazzo può diventare molto buono o molto cattivo: tutto dipenderà
dall’educazione che riceverà”. Allora feci di tutto per educarlo nel modo
migliore. Ma la cosa più importante nella vita è dare e far conoscere Dio ai
figli.
Come è nata la sua
vocazione al sacerdozio?
Marianna Popiełuszko:
Siamo una famiglia molto religiosa. Da noi ogni mattina, dopo il risveglio, e
la sera, prima di andare a dormire, si pregava in ginocchio. Inoltre, nella
nostra casa, avevamo un altarino dove pregava tutta la famiglia. Ogni Mercoledì
si pregava la Madonna del Perpetuo Soccorso, il Venerdì il Santissimo Cuore di
Gesù, il Sabato la Madonna di Czestochowa. Nel mese di maggio cantavamo le
Litanie di Loreto, nel mese di giugno le Litanie del Sacro Cuore di Gesù, nel
mese di luglio le litanie al Sacro Sangue di Cristo, e nel mese di ottobre si
recitava il Rosario. Tre volte la settimana - Mercoledì, Venerdì e Sabato –
cucinavo i pasti senza carne, perché l'uomo, già da bambino, deve sapere che
nella vita c’è bisogno di sacrificio e che non tutto va secondo i suoi desideri
o capricci. Alek cresceva in tale atmosfera, ma sapevo che lui stesso si
controllava. Andava a confessarsi e faceva la santa Comunione; pregava anche da
solo. Più tardi divenne un chierichetto: tutti i giorni si alzava presto per
arrivare in chiesa per le sette e doveva fare cinque chilometri a piedi
attraverso il bosco per arrivare a Suchowola. Non importava se pioveva,
nevicava e c’era il gelo. E così è stato dalla prima classe della scuola elementare
fino all'ultimo anno del liceo.
[La seconda parte
dell’intervista a Marianna Popiełuszko sarà pubblicata domani, giovedì 7 marzo]
(06 Marzo 2013) ©
Innovative Media Inc
.jpg)
Jerzy Popiełuszko - zdjęcie z Europeany
i Cyfrowego Archiwum Pamiątek.
Voir aussi : https://catholicexchange.com/martyrdom-bl-jerzy-popieluszko
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/fr-jerzy-popieluzsko-poland-long-road/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/30/newsid_4111000/4111722.stm
