Jerzy Popiełuszko (1947-1984)

 Jerzy Popiełuszko was born on September 14, 1947, in the village of Okopy near Suchowola in the Białystok Province as Alfons Popiełuszko (in 1971 he officially changed his name to Jerzy). His parents, Marianna and Władysław, ran a farm.

In 1954, he entered primary school in Suchowola. Four years later he became an altar boy at the local parish church.

In 1961, he began his education at a general secondary school in Suchowola.

In 1965, after obtaining his secondary school-leaving certificate, he entered the Metropolitan Seminary of st. John the Baptist in Warsaw.

At the beginning of the second year of studies, he was drafted into the army, in one of the then-existing special units for seminarians in Bartoszyce in Masuria. There, on December 7, 1966, he took the military oath. In the years 1966-1968, he performed his basic military service. During his stay in the army, he was persecuted and tormented. After returning from the army, Fr. Jerzy fell seriously ill.

On May 28, 1972, in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Warsaw, he was ordained a priest by Fr. Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, Primate of Poland. After ordination, he was sent as a vicar to his first pastoral institution in Ząbki near Warsaw.

Fr. Popieluszko then worked in the church of St. Anna (1975-78). For a short time, he was a vicar in the Infant Jesus parish in Żoliborz. In May 1980 he was transferred to the parish of St. Stanisław Kostka in Warsaw's Żoliborz. As a friend of Fr. Popiełuszko, Fr. Czesław Banaszkiewicz, he could carry out his activity there thanks to the then parish priest Teofil Bogucki.

After Solidarity was founded, Fr. Popiełuszko became its spiritual leader, Warsaw steelworkers called him their chaplain, he was the national chaplain of working people and the health service.

"I will not forget this day and this Mass for the rest of my life. I was walking with extreme stage fright. The situation itself was completely new. What will I think? How will they receive me? sounding questions bothered me on the way to the factory. And then at the gate, I experienced my first great amazement. A dense line of people - smiling and crying at the same time. And applause. I thought that someone important was following me. of the priest's factory crossing his gates. I thought then - applause for the Church, which for thirty years was constantly knocking on the factory gates "- this is how Fr. Jerzy recalled his first stay in the Warsaw steelworks on August 31, 1980. He came there to celebrate a mass at the request of the striking steelworkers. He became the chaplain of Solidarity in Huta "Warszawa".

At that time, he made numerous contacts with oppositionists. As witnesses recall, people from all walks of life met in his apartment, incl. workers, intelligentsia, artists. He visited trade unionists in the steelworks several times a month. to Gdańsk, where they met with Lech Wałęsa. He also accompanied them in private ceremonies: he celebrated weddings, baptized, and celebrated funerals. In the church of St. Stanisław Kostka, Fr. Popiełuszko organized lectures on, inter alia, Catholic Social Science.

After the introduction of martial law on December 13, 1981, he was systematically harassed and under surveillance by the SB and MO. Despite this, he organized material help for the interned and their families, he supported various social initiatives, incl. he helped in the action of importing medicines from the West. In the basement of the church of St. Stanisław Kostka was gathered, among others food and drugs. He also participated in trials of people arrested for opposing the law of martial law. He supported political prisoners. He recorded some of the hearings, bringing a tape recorder hidden under his cassock into the courtroom. The material that was created then was broadcast, among others on Radio Free Europe.

Fr. Popiełuszko put his main effort into preparing and leading the Church of St. Stanisław Kostka Mass for the motherland and those who suffer for it. Solidarity delegations from all over the country came to them, intellectuals, actors, and young people participated in them. Through friends, Fr. Popiełuszko was referred to as "the little pope".

In his sermons, he exhorted "overcoming evil with good" (St. Paul's exhortation from the Letter to the Romans: + Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good +).

"You have to be aware of the geopolitical situation we are in, but at the same time this situation cannot be a convenient cover for giving up the rights due to the nation" - said Fr. Jerzy in one of the homilies.

The communist authorities were irritated by the growing popularity of the mass for the homeland. At the end of 1982, the Department for Denominations of the Capital City of Warsaw expressed this in a letter addressed to the Warsaw Metropolitan Curia. Masses Fr. Popiełuszko's opponents called "anti-communist meetings".

At the same time, the communist authorities began to put more and more pressure on the Episcopate to transfer Father Popiełuszko to another parish and prevent him from holding services, which "turned into political demonstrations, posing a threat to order, security and order in the Capital" (Letter of the Office for Religious Affairs to the curia Warsaw of November 26, 1982).

On August 30, 1983, Father Popiełuszko was arrested by the police on his way to Gdynia, where he was to preach. He was taken to the MO headquarters in Łomianki, where he was held for several hours. The prosecutor's office initiated an investigation against him concerning "abuse of freedom of conscience and religion to the detriment of the People's Republic of Poland".

The priest was monitored by the Security Service two years before his death. He was wiretapped, and attempts were made to lead to a car accident. In the apartment at ul. Chłodna, SB officers provoked them by throwing over a dozen thousand leaflets, printing ink, grenades with tear gas, cartridges, and explosives. It was supposed to be evidence for the prepared court trial. Efforts were made to discredit him at all costs. The employees of Huta Warszawa reported to the then primate, Card. Józef Glemp, suggestions that, for the safety of Fr. Popiełuszko to send him to Rome for some time.

In December 1983, Fr. Popiełuszko was arrested and an investigation was launched against him. The Provincial Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw accused him of "abusing the freedom of conscience and religion in the period from 1982 to the detriment of the People's Republic of Poland in the performance of religious rites". In July 1984, after the intervention of the Secretary-General of the Polish Episcopate, Archbishop Bronisław Dąbrowski, the proceedings were discontinued, and Fr. Popiełuszko was released.

In the meantime, articles that slandered Father Popiełuszko were published in the Polish and Soviet press. On September 19, 1984, Jerzy Urban, under the pseudonym Jan Rem, wrote in the "Tu i Teraz" weekly a text entitled "Sessions of Hate". In it he stated: "Hate sessions are organized in Father Popiełuszko's church. The speaker throws not only a few sentences devoid of persuasive meaning and informational value. He only controls emotions."

When attempts at pressure failed, it was decided to take more radical action. On October 13, 1984, the first attempt was to murder Father Popiełuszko, who was returning from Gdańsk by car from St. Brygida to Warsaw. In the vicinity of Olsztynek, officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the future murderers of the priest, planned to cause an accident by throwing a stone in the windshield of a moving car.

The kidnapping of Fr. Popiełuszko was made by three SB officers from the 4th Department of the Ministry of the Interior who were fighting the Catholic Church: Grzegorz Piotrowski, Leszek Pękala, and Waldemar Chmielewski. On October 19, 1984, they left for Bydgoszcz in an official Fiat 125p. On the Toruń-Bydgoszcz route, they stopped a Volkswagen-golf car, in which Fr. Popiełuszko and his driver Waldemar Chrostowski. The driver officers put handcuffs on their hands and a gag on the mouth. The priest, who did not want to get into the car, knocked him unconscious and threw him into the trunk. Chrostowski managed to jump out of the car while driving.

When the torturers stopped near the "Kosmos" hotel in Toruń and opened the trunk, the priest began to run away. However, after a few blows with the truncheon, he lost consciousness and was placed in the trunk again. During the further drive, the hijackers, fearing a roadblock, decided to kill the priest. They tied a sack of stones to his legs, sealed his mouth with plaster, and then threw him into the Vistula Lagoon near Włocławek.

On October 30, 1984, the TV news reported that the body of Father Popiełuszko had been fished out of the Vistula near Włocławek. The body was so massacred that the family identified it only on the basis of special signs. An 11 kg sack with stones was tied to the priest's legs.

In the trial of the murderers of Father Popiełuszko (the so-called Toruń trial), Grzegorz Piotrowski was sentenced to 25 years in prison, his superior, Adam Pietruszka, deputy head of the 4th department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - also for 25 years; Leszek Pękala - for 15 years and Waldemar Chmielewski - for 14 years. All of them were released from prison before the end of their sentence. Piotrowski left prison in 2001, Pietruszka after ten years (1995), Pękala - five years (1990), Chmielewski - eight years later (1993).

To this day, it is not known whether the murderers and their immediate superiors from the 4th Department of the Ministry of the Interior were followed by higher-placed principals.

Fr. Popiełuszko was buried at the church of St. Stanisław Kostka, and not in Powązki or in his hometown of Suchowola - as the then authorities wanted. About 800,000 people attended the funeral on November 3, 1984. faithful and nearly a thousand priests. The funeral mass is presided over by Primate Józef Glemp.

From the day of the funeral, Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko, his tomb became a place of mass pilgrimages and prayers - it was visited by nearly 20 million people. The fame of holiness and martyrdom spread not only to Poland but also to the whole world and continues. At the tomb of Fr. Popiełuszko was prayed in 1987 by Pope John Paul II, and in 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger - later Pope Benedict XVI.

In 1997, the beatification process of Father Popiełuszko began. 12 years later, Pope Benedict XVI signed the decree on the martyrdom of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, which was tantamount to making a decision to elevate him to the altars.

On June 6, 2010, at Piłsudski Square in Warsaw, a solemn beatification mass for Father Jerzy Popiełuszko was celebrated. Right after the mass. the procession with the relics of Fr. Popiełuszko to the Pantheon of Great Poles at the Divine Providence Center in Wilanów. On September 20 this year, in the chapel of the General House of the Annunciade Sisters in Thiais near Paris, an investigation began into the alleged healing caused by Bl. Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko. The miraculous healing case involved 56-year-old François Audelan, who suffered from atypical, chronic myeloid leukemia.

In September 2015, Bishop of Creteil Michel Santier announced the procedure of examining the scientifically unexplainable cure of terminally ill leukemia through the intercession of the Polish martyr, Bl. Father Jerzy Popiełuszko ended with a positive result.

In November 2015, the Metropolitan of Warsaw, Card. Kazimierz Nycz told PAP that the miracle was due to Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko being concerned about cancer; in such a situation, the Church waits 5 years to be sure that it is healed. This means that the earliest canonization could take place in 2017.