ANGEL OF AUSCHWITZ

 

SERVANT OF GOD STEFANIA LACKA (pronounced “Wonska”) was born on Jan. 6, 1914, in Wola Żelichowska, a village in southern Poland to a devout, peasant family.  From a very young age she experienced a deep faith. Every day she found a moment during the long days of work in the fields to take refuge in the church and pray.

At the parish, she took the opportunity to read, because the parish priest opened his doors to anyone who wanted to read in his extensive library.   She attended a teacher-training institution, graduating in 1933.

 

From 1934 to 1939, she worked for Nasza Sprawa (“Our Case”), the Catholic weekly publication of the Diocese of Tarnów, writing 700 articles and editing the children’s supplement Króluj nam Chryste (“Christ, reign over us”). 

After the Nazi German invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, the editorial team offered its skills to the Polish underground movement. The Gestapo arrested Stefania and other members of the team on April 16, 1941. 

 She was held at the Gestapo headquarters in Tarnów and later at the local prison. She was interrogated and tortured, but did not reveal the names of any of her associates.

 She was transported on April 27, 1942, with 60 other female prisoners to Auschwitz, where she was assigned the number 6886.

 In June 1942, a female prisoner escaped the camp. The authorities forced the prisoners to stand in the roll-call square for two days waiting to discover who would be killed in retribution for the escape.

 Bishop Jeż’s edict, dated July 26 but reported on the diocesan website on Aug. 8, said that Stefania was standing beside her friend, Helena Panek, as they awaited their fate. Stefania promised that if Helen was selected then she would go to her death with her. But the authorities were ordered not to proceed with their planned punishment. In spite of torture and dire living conditions, she refused to lose her humanity and encouraged other women

While caring for the sick Stefania fell ill with typhus and was admitted to the camp hospital in block 23. She recovered by the spring of 1943 and began working in the camp hospital as a nurse. Using her proficiency in German enabled her to gain access to some documents.

 Even though she knew it would cost her life if she was discovered, she altered data to get some people off the lists of those condemned to the gas chambers or to receive a lethal injection. She also wrote letters to the families of prisoners, and shared the power of prayer with everyone she could.

When she was unable to save babies condemned to the gas chamber along with their mothers, Stefania didn’t hesitate to baptize them in secret. 

“Risking her own life, she baptized newborns and ministered to people who were seriously ill,” Bishop Jeż noted in the edict. “She also watched over the dying, sweetening their last hours of life.” She encouraged other female prisoners to pray together with the dying.  Her fellow prisoners called her the ‘earthly guardian angel.'”

 She wrote a camp prayer book that survived the Second World War intact.

Stefania left Auschwitz with five companions on Jan. 23, 1945, days after the camp was bombed. She returned to her family home in Wola Żelichowska, where she attended daily Mass and helped her family.

 She began studying Polish philology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, but her health deteriorated and she was admitted to a hospital in the city in October 1946. She died on Nov. 7, 1946, at the age of 33 of tuberculosis

 In his edict, Bishop Jeż said that Stefania ’s spirituality offered an example for Christians today.“Stefania Lacka was distinguished for her high degree of the virtues of faith, hope, love, and moral virtues. From the day of her funeral to the present, her private cult has been growing.

At the Basilica of Our Lady of Consolation in Pasierbiec, a village near Krakow, in 2010 the people dedicated the outdoor Stations of the Cross with figures from recent Polish Catholic history. At the the Eighth Station, where Jesus speaks to the women,  He greets Stanislawa Leszczynska, who delivered over 3,000 babies at Auschwitz and Servant of God Stefania Lacka.

LAY MARTYR- APOSTLE OF MERCY

 

BLESSED STANISLAUS KOSTKA STAROWIEYSKI was born in Poland in 1895, into a wealthy political family, who were very active Catholics. Graduating from high school in 1914, Stanislaw went on to study law at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. However, his academic pursuits were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.

Undeterred by the obstacles presented by the war, Stanislaw joined the Austro-Hungarian army and became a soldier and officer, serving on the eastern front and in Italy.

After the war, he played a vital role in the establishment of the Polish army in 1918. Stanislaw's dedication to his country led him to actively participate in the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918 & 1919, where he notably defended the citadel of Lviv.

 He continued his military service in the Polish‚ Russian war of 1920, rising through the ranks to become a captain and earning numerous decorations for his bravery. However, his military career was cut short by a near-fatal bout of dysentery in 1920.

Returning to civilian life, Stanislaw exhibited exceptional organizational and people skills. Recognizing the importance of agriculture in the country, he studied the subject and, in 1921, assumed the management of the 1,000-acre Zamosc farms in Labunie, Poland.

His reputation as a fair employer who ensured just wages and medical coverage for his workers quickly spread.  Bl. Stanisław was a model for living a vibrant Catholic life. He went to daily Mass, organized retreats and pilgrimages, visited orphans, and later in the concentration camps he cared for the spiritual needs of other prisoners.

In 1921 he married Maria Szeptycka, niece of Bl. Klymentiy Sheptysky and of Venerable Andrey Sheptysky of the Ukranian Greek Catholic Church. The couple moved into a war-damaged estate given to them by Stanisław’s father-in-law, but rather than use their money to rebuild the estate, they lived in a small building on the property, giving generously to the poor, and raising six children.

 After housing refugees during World War II, he was arrested together with his brother Marian in November 1939, by the Nazis for being a Catholic leader. While they initially managed to escape, Marian was recaptured and sent to the Russian interior, never to be heard from again.

 Stanislaw's freedom was short-lived, as he was apprehended by German troops and taken to the notorious Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, Germany.

He became known as an apostle of mercy, living as a concentration camp prisoner, sharing his food with fellow prisoners, and urging them to hope. For those reasons, and because he came from a family of Polish nobility, he was regularly beaten by guards, often brutally. Taking those beatings, his health declined fast, and Stanislaw died on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1941.

His unwavering faith, his commitment to his fellow human beings, and his martyrdom for the Catholic cause have made him a symbol of inspiration and holiness.

Pope St. John Paul II, recognizing his heroic virtues and sacrificial death,  beatified him on June 13, 1999.

 In his homily at the beatification, St. John Paul II talked about the hope of Polish people amid the horrors they experienced in the Second World War:

 “Faith in divine mercy made it possible for hope to endure in us. This hope did not concern social rebirth alone, or merely the restoration of dignity to man in the different world contexts.

Our hope penetrates far deeper: it is directed in fact to the divine promises which go far beyond temporal realities. Its definitive object is the sharing in the fruits of the saving work of Christ.”

His feast day is commemorated on June 4, and he is also honored as one of the 108 Martyrs of World War II on June 12.

Blessed Stanislaw Kostka Starowieyski remains an enduring example of selflessness, devotion, and courage in the face of adversity.

 

CHURCH'S GIFT TO 21st CENTURY

 Our last writer for the month was an influential Catholic writer and thinker known for her penetrating studies on sanctity, the Church, and the spiritual life. Though widely read in the mid‑20th century, she is less known today—despite praise from major figures like Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), who called her “a brave and insightful voice given to the Church Today".  She has been almost entirely forgotten in German-speaking Europe but is more well known in the USA.  Bishop Erik Varden  (Trappist monk who has served as Bishop of Trondheim, Norway since 2020) described her as "one of the seminal Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century".

IDA FRIEDERIKE GORRES was born in 1901 in western Bohemia. She was the daughter, one of the seven children, of Count Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi and his Japanese wife, Mitsuko Aoyama.  Her father was a diplomat for the Habsburg empire in Japan in the late 1800s. There, he met her mother, the daughter of a Japanese antiques dealer. Her father died when Ida was young. Her mother was cold toward her and her two sisters, even telling them they were “ugly” because of their mixed Asian-European features, while the mother embraced her four sons. 

Ida attended Austrian convent schools, first at the College of the Sacred Heart in Pressbaum near Vienna and then with the Mary Ward Sisters in St. Pölten. In 1923, she entered a novitiate at the Mary Ward Institute but left the convent in 1925. After that, she studied political science in Vienna from 1925 to 1927, and then other topics such as the social sciences, history, church history, theology and philosophy from 1927 to 1929 in Freiburg.

She became involved in the German Catholic Youth Movement around 1925, acting as the federal leader of the girls and writing articles for the magazine Die Schildgenossen. Then in 1931, she went to Dresden as a youth secretary for girls' pastoral care working there at the Catholic Educational Institute. In the spring of 1934 she became diocesan secretary at the ordinariate of the Diocese of Meissen. The Catholic Youth Movement during this period saw a tremendous Catholic revival. She was particularly active in the German branch of it known as Quickborn, led by Father Romano Guardini  (great theologan and writer everyone of my generation read in theology class, especially his book The Lord.  See BLOGS 10/24/2017 & 8/2/2016).

Around this time, Ida met engineer Carl-Josef Görres (1903-1973), who was the older brother of Catholic psychologist Albert Görres and his wife, Silvia Görres (née Volkart) a noted. psychotherapist and author. On Easter day (21 April) 1935, Ida and Carl-Josef married at the Oratory in Leipzig. Some time after the ceremony, the couple moved to Stuttgart-Degerloch. Through his work as an engineer and business consultant, Carl-Josef Görres made it possible for Ida to have the opportunity to work as a writer and theologian. Sadly, the couple were never able to have children.

Ida wrote on various topics on hagiography, stressing the importance of the "humanness of saints." During the last three or four years of World War II, her books were not allowed to be sold in Germany.  After the war was over, she continued to write, travel, and lecture, until in 1950 a breakdown in health drove her into seclusion. Her frank 1946 "Letter on the Church" unleashed significant controversy, though it is now viewed in hindsight as prescient.

She was loyal to the tradition of Catholic Church: "I have known no other father but these fathers, the priests of the Church, no brothers but my own dear brothers, the theology students," she said. "No mother but the Church...I loved them all and clung to them, not only as a daughter and sister, but as a Japanese daughter and sister, in the intensity of unconditional submission which belongs to Japanese filial piety." 

On February 21, 1969, the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper wrote to  Hans Urs von Balthasar, a Swiss theologian and Catholic priest who is considered one of the most important Catholic theologians of the 20th century. With Joseph Ratzinger and Henri de Lubac (a French Jesuit priest and cardinal also considered one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century and whose writings and doctrinal research played a key role in shaping the Second Vatican Council), he founded the theological journal Communio, “Do you know the heartfelt essay by Ida Fr. Görres on The Spirituality of Studying Theology [...; I wish it were in the hands of every student of theology, especially ‘lay’ theologians.”

 Ida Görres participated in the Würzburg synod and died a day after (May 16,1971) collapsing following an impassioned speech at  the synod meeting in Frankfurt. At the Requiem held in Freiburg Cathedral, the eulogy was delivered by Father Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI.

"Even at this hour: can we give thanks? Can we give thanks at the death of Ida Friederike Görres, with which a voice has been taken away from us, a voice which seems irreplaceable to the Church in this situation, when we are in a desert of conformism or embarrassed silence? She spoke with an insightful certainty and a fearlessness about the pressing questions and tasks of the Church today, something which is given only to the one who truly believes. And where else are there such voices?" (Homily of Father Joseph Ratziner at Ida Gorres' funeral Mass.

Ida is best known in the English speaking world for her 1944 study of Thérèse of Lisieux, Das Verborgene Antlitz - translated as The Hidden Face.

Since 2020, there has been renewed interest among English-speaking Catholics her work. There have been new translations of her works into English by Jennifer S. Bryson. Magnificat Magazine often uses passages from her writing as meditations

HOLY JOURNALIST

 

Our next writer was  BL. MANUEL “LOLO” LOZANO GARRIDO,  a Spanish  journalist  and  Missionary.

 Manuel, known as “Lolo”,  was born in 1920 in Linares, Jaén, Kingdom of Spain.  He had seven brothers and one sister.  His father died in 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War.  At that time, Manuel served as a Eucharistic Minister in his community, taking Communion to people in their homes.  He did this until he was arrested for this activity.

When Lolo was 15, he lost his mother as well. Lolo found strength in his faith, in the Eucharist. From a young age, he was part of the Catholic Action Movement. 

When he was 22, Manuel became a soldier but always had time to attend daily Mass.  Unfortunately, he suffered from spondylitis a degenerative disease.and had to leave the military because of increasingly poor health.  The next year, Lolo was paralyzed and spent the rest of his life in near-constant pain and wheelchair-bound.

Despite his pain, Lolo devoted his life to serving God as a journalist.  Not only did he have hundreds of his articles published, he also wrote nine books that he dedicated to his only sister, Lucia. The constant pain he experienced didn't extinguish his curiosity and love for the written word. Those who knew him said he never complained. 

The doors of his house were always open to everyone. When he could no longer write with one hand, he used the other. If he kept dropping his pen, he would attach it to his wrist. Then he moved to the typewriter, which he could use because he still had some mobility in his fingers. 

During Mass, he would set it on the altar. That's how he wrote the “Journalist's Decalogue,” which Pope Francis remembered during an encounter with the media.

 In his 'Journalist's Decalogue,' he recommends “paying with the coin of frankness,” “kneading the bread of clean information with the salt of style and the yeast of eternity,” and to serve “neither pastries nor spicy dishes, but rather a tasty bite of the clean and hope-filled life.” 

Because of his intense love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, Lolo sought, and received, permission to have the Blessed Sacrament on his home altar.  He put his typewriter in front of the Blessed Sacrament for guidance from the Lord as he wrote.

One of the ways Lolo did missionary work from his home was by founding a magazine for those who were sick.  He called the magazine Sinai. In 1958 he travelled with his sister to Lourdes. In 1962 he lost his sight but continued his writing.

Lolo died on November 3, 1971 in his hometown of Linares, Jaén, Francoist Spain, at the age of 51.

On 19 December 2009, Pope Benedict XVI  authorized the recognition of a miracle attributed to Manuel's intercession in the cure of Rogelio de Haro Sagra (aged two) in 1972; the child had suffered from multiple organ failure due to Gram-negative sepsis.

Lolo was beatified on June 12, 2010. His feast is November 3. 

  Blessed Manuel is a patron of journalists.

SAINT FOR NORWAY?

 

As we are dealing with some Catholic writers this month, the news just came from the Diocese of Oslo, Norway, that the cause for the canonization of SIGRID UNDSET will take place soon. Her novel  Kristin Lavransdatter  is considered to be one of the best of the 20^th century.  (See Blogs:  Oct 23 & Oct 26, 2023)

She is recognized by the Church as an example of how intellectual brilliance, personal conversion and perseverance through suffering can become a path toward holiness.

Most are aware of her writings, but few know of her inner life, her care of the poor and defense of human dignity. She courageously defended the Catholic Church, in a country which was mainly Lutheran, and through her writing fought against Hitler and Nazism.

After Germany occupied Norway during the Second World War, she fled to the United States, where she spoke forcefully in support of the Norwegian resistance, returning home after the war.  

The American Pulitzer Prize  winner, Willa Cather, met Sigrid months after the Norwegian novelist’s son was killed in action in 1940. Willa describes Sigrid’s “heroic calm” and calls her the greatest and most truthful woman she has ever known. 

“Every time I see her,” writes Willa of her visits while Sigrid was living at the Hotel Margaret in Brooklyn, “she brings a large peace and relaxation. 

She is just all a great woman should be - and on a giant scale... there is in the woman a kind of heroic calm and warmth that rises above all the cruel tragedies and loss of fortune that the last three years have brought. She simply surmounts everything that has been wrecked about her and stands large and calm; she who has lost everything seems still to possess everything, and the small pleasures can still make her rather cold eyes glow with marvelous pleasure. She combines in herself the nature of an artist, a peasant, and a scholar. She is cut on a larger pattern than any woman I have ever known, and it rests me just to sit and look at the strength that stood unshaken through so much."

Bishop Fredrik Hansen of Oslo said her life demonstrates that sanctity is not reserved for the extraordinary few, but remains the universal calling of every baptized Christian.

It has been a very long time since there was a Norwegian saint. St Magnus Erlendsson, who died in 1117, and St Olaf Haraldson, who was canonized in 1164, were the last saints.

CATHOLIC POET IN OLD AGE

 

Summer is the time of reading, so there are always lists of books to read- even children have programs and contests to get them to read more books in their vacation time. I thought it would be a good time to highlight some future saints who were writers.

 The first is a poet, who is an inspiration to us all. that one is never too old to be creative, and never too old to be holy.

 ANNE CHANNING PORTER was born in Sherborn, near Boston in 1911 into a prominent, wealthy family. Her great-great uncle was the famous preacher and author William Ellery Channing (the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century).

 She made poems even before she could write, having an uncle write them down for her.

She was educated at Bryn Mawr and Harvard preceding her marriage to the painter Fairfield Porter in 1932.  In spite of a marriage that was at times difficult, she was a dutiful wife and mother of five, finding time to write poems on the side, some of which were published.

She decided to write more after her husband died in 1975. Yet her first book, An Altogether Different Language, came out when she was 83 years old. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1994. In 2006, she added 44 new poems to the book and renamed it “Living Things.”

The sense of her own spirituality was enhanced by the discovery of the writing of St. Francis of Assisi  from an early age.  She was also moved by the daily prayer of the family servants, many of whom were Irish. She was encouraged by Dorothy Day  to meet with Father Joseph McSorley, an old Paulist priest and in 1954 she came into the Catholic Church, much to the chagrin of her atheist family, though her husband supported her in this move. 

Her poems were largely spiritual in nature, almost meditations on Bible verses, hymns and prayers. It seemed her upbringing in Sherborn instilled in her an attentiveness to nature and to the beauty of the world around her. Her poems call upon the natural world to express a deep love and appreciation for life. Poet David Shapiro called her “an American religious poet of stature who reminds us that the idea of the holy is still possible for us.”

"Her poems are uncomplicated and accessible free verse, expressing exquisite  descriptions of natural and human life illuminated by the power and grace and the redeeming love of Jesus Christ." (John Janaro in Magnificat Magazine)

Continuing to write throughout her later years, Anne moved to Hampton Bays to live with her daughter. She died just before her 100th birthday in 2011. For Anne Porter, her poetry was her prayer.

My favorite is “The First of May”, where she integrates pain, suffering and the deteriorations of old age, although on first reading it seems to be about only new life..

 

Now the smallest creatures, who do not know they have names
In fields of pure sunshine open themselves and sing.
All over the marshes and in the wet meadows,
Wherever there is water, the companies of peepers
Who cannot count their members, gather with sweet shouting.
And the flowers of the woods who cannot see each other
Appear in perfect likeness of one another
Among the weak new shadows on the mossy places.
Now the smallest creatures, who know themselves by heart,
With all their tender might and roundness of delight
Spending their colors, their myriads and their voices
Praise the moist ground and every winking leaf
And the new sun that smells of the new streams.

.

Paintings: Anne often posed for her husband’s paintings, usually in the setting of their kitchen, living room or backyard. 

BASTILLE DAY- AN AMERICAN SAINT

Perhaps I should have posted this closer to the 4th of July, since our saint-to-be was born just 3 days after the independence of our nation, but as it happens today is actually better as it is Bastille Day, celebrated annually in France on July 14.

 It is the national holiday commemorating the storming of the Bastille in 1789. This violent uprising at a notorious Paris prison symbolized the downfall of the absolute monarchy and marked the explosive beginning of the French Revolution and the ultimate triumph of liberty over autocracy. This period in French history would effect the life of the following man.

SERVANT OF GOD SIMON WILLIAM GABRIEL BRUTE de REMUR was born in Rennes, France in 1779 to an ancient and wealthy family.  At the age of seven, his father, a parliamentary lawyer and steward of the Crown properties in Brittany, died.  He was raised by his mother, a woman of rare worth, who gave her children a deep love of their faith.

This was the day of the great persecutions of the French Revolution, when the prisons of Rennes were choked with victims and when blood was pouring down from the scaffolds.

 Not wanting her child to participate in the Reign of Terror, his mother taught him the printing trade, which was his late father’s trade. He witnessed trials and executions of priests as well as visited imprisoned priests, smuggling in the Blessed Sacrament disguised as a bakers assistant.. 

In 1796 he studied medicine, yet upon graduation in 1803 he entered the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice, Paris. Ordained in 1808, he refused the post of assistant chaplain to Napoleon I, instead joining the Society of Saint-Sulpice (Sulpicians).

He taught theology for two years before emigrating to the United States. At St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, he taught philosophy for two years then transferred to Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Maryland and taught while serving as pastor to local Catholics. 

He struggled with mastery of English, becoming able to write but never fluent in conversational English. He also served as the spiritual director of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, founder of the Sisters of Charity in the United States.

In 1834, he was assigned as Bishop to the diocese of Vincennes, modern day Indiana and eastern Illinois. A week after his installation as bishop of Vincennes, Bishop Bruté decided to visit his entire diocese. Clearly, two priests to assist in the ministry of the diocese would not do  so he wrote to the bishop of his native Diocese of Rennes in France to see if he could find help. He also wrote to his younger brother, Augustine, seeking everything from cruets, vestments, altar cards, missals, a ring and a pectoral cross (“in case I lose mine”), a miter, a crosier (“the one I have is gilded wood”), to a very light chasuble for carrying on horseback. He drew a map of the diocese for his brother, a copy of which is still extant.

The majority of the people encountered in the diocese were not Catholic. But for the most part, suspicions were laid aside, and the bishop and his two priests were received kindly. Bishop Bruté wrote: “The Bishop left every place well pleased, fondly believing that the people would easily be reconciled to ‘the man of sin’ of Vincennes, and more easily to the other sinners, his successors.”

The bishop’s lot was like that of any other missionary at the time.He had to inquire where a Catholic family might be found and go in search of them. Most Catholics didn’t even know that Indiana had its own bishop until he arrived.

Their bishop rode hundreds of miles on horseback. He wrote to a friend in May 1835 that he had made his rounds “with an ease that I could express, if to be believed, by saying that I felt no more tired every evening than if I had not left my room—I can’t conceive it—one day it was a full 60 miles, till eleven o’clock at night mostly through the wet prairies.” But there wasn’t much the bishop could do for his scattered people until he found more priests. He knew that he could only find them in France.

Visiting France, he wa able to secure priests and funds to build Churches throughout his diocese. At the time of his death in 1839, there were 25 diocesan priests and 20 seminarians serving throughout the diocese. 

 He was buried under the sanctuary of the cathedra of Vincennes, Indiana, wher he died. His tremendous influence on the entire church, his success in planning, financing, and carrying out necessary ecclesiastical reforms, and the constructive and executive ability he displayed in his diocese made him one of the foremost Catholic emigrants to the United States. He wrote Brief Notes on his experiences in France in 1793, in which he described state persecution of Catholic priests.

He became known for his unselfishness, his austerity, and his spirituality, as well as for his immense erudition.