NOT KILLED BY STONES

In the mid 8os a neighbor of our Abbey in CT gave us each a photo of a newly martyred priest. She and her husband were Polish- he had been a general in the Polish army in WWII. The photo  was of a new “monument” erected on the spot where this young priest had been martyred.  The Communists wrongly thought that if they got rid of him, his words against them would fade away. The authorities were badly mistaken, as the death caused so much uprising it was the beginning of the end for Communism in this very Catholic country.  While the whole affair was disturbing at the time for us in the USA, it was too remote for me at the time to stir much in my heart.  Yet I still have that photo, some 40 years later.  (see “monument”  below).

BLESSED JERZY POPIELUSZKO was born in 1947, on a farm in the small village of Okopy located in North Eastern Poland. His parents Wladyslaw and Mariana were devout Catholics. Jerzy was a fragile child but he made up for any physical infirmities in strength of character.

It is important to understand the state of his country during his lifetime, in order to understand his death. Poland was  suffering from the aftermath of the reign of terror by the Nazi’s and the ongoing persecution of the Church by the Communists since the country’s occupation by the Russians in the Second World War.  Okopy, the geographical center or “heart” of Poland was a rural village and thus its school system was not as deeply infiltrated with the sociology of the communist regime, but nevertheless Jerzy suffered for his Faith.

Each morning before classes began Jerzy would walk three miles to serve Mass, and then after classes were over in the evening, would return to the Church to pray the Rosary. His spirituality was ridiculed and he was accused by his teacher of praying too much. (I remember when I was in the Czech Republic in the late 1980s, the friend I stayed with said they too suffered because of their faith, especially regarding employment.)

As a precaution Jerzy kept secret his intention to become a priest for fear that if it were known,  the results of his exams would be altered. After graduating high school in 1965 he headed for the seminary in Warsaw, chosen due to its closeness to the monastery of St Maximilian Kolbe, a favorite saint of his.

After one year of seminary training Jerzy was drafted into the military for a two year tour in a special unit for clerics in Bartoszyce.  The plan for drafting clerics into the service was to indoctrinate them with the communistic ideal and cause them to lose their vocation. In spite of bitter persecution ensuing from the practice of his Faith, Jerzy firmly defied the authority’s attempt to marginalize Catholicism.

On one occasion, when Jerzy refused to crush his rosary beneath his heel he was cruelly beaten and placed in solitary confinement for a month. Another time he refused to remove a medal from abound his neck, so was forced to stand for hours in the freezing rain. He was also made to crawl around the camp on his hands and knees as a punishment for saying the rosary.

This contributed to his already frail health, causing him to undergo a life threatening surgery to undo the damage done to his heart and kidneys from his beatings. The recovery caused his ordination to be delayed, but on May 28, 1972, he was ordained by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the Primate of Poland who led the Church’s resistance to communism, beatified September 12, 2021.

After being ordained, he served at local parishes.  His sermons, famous for exhorting members of the faithful to resist Communism, were broadcast on Radio Free Europe. 

From December 13, 1981, to July 22, 1983, the Polish People's Republic imposed martial law in an effort to crush political opposition.  During that period, Father Jerzy continued to celebrate Mass in public places. Father Jerszy also organized a relief effort to help the families suffering from the loss of their jobs and livelihood as a result of defending the Faith, or the government having declared martial law.

The government grew more and more frustrated with Father Jerzy as more and more people flocked to him, and at the monthly Mass for the homeland, had guards stationed at every block corner to watch him. He went out of his way to be kind to these guards, calling them his “Guardian Angels” and even bringing them coffee in the cold Polish winter.

"An idea which needs rifles to survive dies of its own ­accord," he observed.  "It is not enough for a Christian to condemn evil, cowardice, lies, and use of force, hatred, and oppression.  He must at all times be a witness to and defender of justice, goodness, truth, freedom, and love.  He must never tire of claiming these values as a right both for himself and others."

In 1983, he was arrested on trumped-up charges, but members of the clergy intervened and he was soon released and granted amnesty.  He then emerged unscathed from a car "accident" on October 13, 1984, that had been staged by the state for the purpose of killing him. 

But on October 19, 1984, he was murdered by three agents of the Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.  The thugs lured him by faking the breakdown of their vehicle and flagging him down for help.  They savagely beat him, tied him up, and shoved him in the trunk of their car.  They then bound a stone to his feet and dumped him into a nearby reservoir.  His body was recovered on October 30. The last public words spoke by Blessed Jerzy during the meditation on the rosary October 19, 1984:  In order to defeat evil with good, in order to preserve the dignity of man, one must not use violence. It is the person who has failed to win on the strength of his heart and his reason, who tries to win by force…Let us pray that we be free from fear and intimidation, but above all from the lusts for revenge and violence.”

"Truth, like justice," he once observed, "is connected to love, and love has a price." 

An uproar went up across Poland.  His funeral was attended by 250,000.  His martyrdom became a flash point for the anti-Communist resistance movement.  His assassins were subsequently tried and convicted of murder, as was the colonel who gave the order. 

He was buried in Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church, Warsaw, and in 2009 was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian and military honor.

The rock used to kill him is now housed as a relic in San Bartolomeo all'Isola, the Shrine to the New Martyrs of the 20th and 21st centuries, in Rome.

He was beatified on June 6, 2010, by Archbishop Angelo Amato on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. His feast is October 19.