I was delighted to read on the Rorate Caeli website that Father Jerzy Popieluszko has been declared venerable, and a martyr, by Pope Benedict. I remember reading about the young Polish priest’s gruesome murder by Communist agents in 1984, but I did not see much of a follow up in Catholic papers about his life. He was indeed a very holy man. Although there are reports of miracles granted through his intercession, the Vatican has yet to approve any as certifiably authentic. When that is done, hopefully he will be beatified soon after.
Not One? Why?
Why hasn’t one martyr of Communist persecution been declared a saint? Why? I have no clue. Can someone give me an explanation? The orthodox Russians have canonized their “saints,” and if they died for Christ (renouncing their rebellion against His Vicar), they are worthy. Martyrs to be sure. But why hasn’t the One true Church yet canonized a martyr of the Communists. Not under the Soviet atheists, nor under the Chinese Reds? Why isn’t there an uproar about this? I am talking about people who died, not only about people who suffered. Nine years ago, Pope John Paul II canonized 120 Chinese martyrs killed during the Boxer rebellion around 1900, but no victims of the Communists. Nevertheless, the Chinese Reds were furious about those canonizations! The Mexican Communists were furious about the possible canonization of victims of the Communist persecution in their country of the 1920s, of President Calles, a Lebanese Red, who killed Padre Pro. He is beatified but not yet canonized. Why has he not been canonized? Why are martyrs of the Communists not raised to our altars in the universal “Catholic” Church”?
Jerzy (George) Popieluszko was born on September 14, 1947, in the village of Okopy near Suchowola in Poland. His parents were farmers. During his youth, while attending school, he kept a desire for the priesthood secret lest he be singled out by the Communists and victimized socially and academically. By the 1950s the Church in Poland was undergoing a vicious persecution. In 1953 the Cardinal Primate, Stefan Wyszynski,was arrested along with his auxiliary bishop and other immediate associates. Seven bishops were imprisoned, more than two thousand Polish priests were imprisoned, deported, or made to flee into exile, and thirty-seven of those priests were put to death. Nearly half the religious houses in Poland were closed, and more than seventy per cent of the Catholic schools.
Persecution
The persecution continued into the 1960s, however, realizing that they could not destroy the Church by blood and labor camps, the Reds employed other techniques against the clergy, such as monitoring sermons for “political” content, excessive taxation, and late night arrests and interrogations. Then, in 1965, a schismatic National Catholic Church was established that would be subordinate to the atheistic government. It was a total failure. This was the year that eighteen year-old Jerzy entered one of the seminaries that had not been forced to close. That freedom didn’t last long; his entire class was conscripted into the army. Many times the seminarian had to suffer for his Faith in this compulsory service. One time, an officer discovered his rosary and ordered him to grind it into the ground. Jerzey refused and was brutally beaten. There were other physical punishments that he suffered on account of his Catholic Faith, all of which contributed to serious health problems, which left him very thin and frail. When his period of military duty was over he returned to the seminary where he received “passing” grades, nothing to get high-headed about, but enough to qualify him to receive what he so greatly desired, holy orders.
The Young Priest
On May 28, 1972, Jerzy Popieluszko was ordained by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. While serving as a parish priest, however, Father Popieluszko’s health grew worse. During one Mass, he collapsed and had to be hospitalized. To help his recovery he was assigned to a university parish in Warsaw and served as chaplain to a medical school. One incident, which occurred during Pope John Paul II’s first visit to Poland, exemplifies the kind of man Father Jerzey was. One of three girls who were bringing the Offertory gifts to the altar at the outdoor Mass (I am only reporting here, not supporting the innovation) had a letter for the Pope. The secret police, assuming that it was from the Solidarity Union, interrupted the procession and seized the letter. Seeing this, Father Popieluszko jumped over a barrier, grabbed the letter from the police and returned it in time to the girls. Fearing the crowds the police let him go; but, he would now be high on their “public enemy” list.
A New Challenge: Warsaw
After this incident, the young priest was re-assigned to Saint Stanislaus Kostka church in Warsaw. Among his parishioners and extended flock were the steel workers who were, at this time, conducting strikes as members of the Solidarity Union. Something happened to Father Jerzey during this chaplaincy to the steel workers. Although he was beloved for his humility and zeal by the students, doctors, and nurses in his previous pastorate, now he seemed to be totally consumed, on fire for his people, for their sanctity, for their families, for their social rights as workingmen. He spent every spare minute he had with the factory workers, saying Mass, preaching, hearing confessions, and encouraging them in their pursuit of a just wage and humane working conditions. He was the confessor of Lech Walesa, who headed the Solidarity Union.
The transformation from a frail and sickly priest to a thundering and eloquent preacher, and ardent antagonist to the Communist regime, was astonishing. His sermons would draw tens of thousands, and they were aired regularly on Radio Free Europe. When the country fell under martial law, his monthly “Mass for the Homeland” gave the whole country a voice that kept hope alive. More than “inconvenient,” he had become the man the Communists feared most. He was setting Poland on fire. He had to be stopped.
To Suffer for, with, and in Christ
Father Popieluszko’s strong faith was the fruit of a lifetime of prayer. It was Christ whom he saw in the suffering of the Polish people: “The trial of Jesus goes on forever,” he bellowed in a sermon, “It continues through his brothers. Only their names, their faces, their dates, and their birthplaces change. If truth becomes for us a value, worthy of suffering and risk, then we shall overcome fear – the direct reason for our enslavement.” When, in 1983, a Franciscan convent was raided by the secret police and a young student murdered by Red thugs, it was Father Jerzey whose angry voice echoed that of a nation in captivity: “this was too little for Satan [the raid on the convent]. So he went further and committed a crime so terrible that the whole of Warsaw was struck dumb with shock. He cut short an innocent life. In bestial fashion he took away a mother’s only son.” He ended by saying “This nation is not forced to its knees by any satanic power. This nation has proved that it bends the knee only to God. And for that reason we believe that God will stand up for it.”
Popieluszko’s voice was heard far beyond Poland. Michael Kaufman, the New York Times’ Warsaw Bureau Chief took noted: “Nowhere else from East Berlin to Vladivostok,” he wrote, “could anyone stand before ten or fifteen thousand people and use a microphone to condemn the errors of state and party. Nowhere, in that vast stretch encompassing some four hundred million people, was anyone else openly telling a crowd that defiance of authority was an obligation of the heart, of religion, manhood, and nationhood.”
By this time the authorities had stepped up their persecution of the “meddlesome priest.” Interrogations became routine, many nights were spent in prison, and authorities even planted subversive literature and bomb making materials in his apartment in order to inculpate him in a charge of violent insurrection.
The Pope, hearing of the persecution, called upon the Polish hierarchy to provide more protection for Father Popieluszko. He even sent him his own Rosary as a sign of support.
On October 13, 1984, the feast of the miracle of the sun at Fatima, Father Jerzy and his driver were traveling the Gdansk-Warsaw road when someone threw something at his car that would have caused a fatal “accident” had not the driver reacted quickly to avoid a crash.
A week later on October 19, 1984, despite warnings of “serious consequences” if he did so, Father Popieluszko celebrated Mass in the northern town of Bydgoszcz. Instead of preaching a sermon, he delivered a meditation on the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary. His conclusion to the reflections were his last public words:
“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 may be free from fear and intimidation, but above all from lust for revenge and violence.”
On the return trip to Warsaw Father Jerzey’s car was blocked on a lonely road and intercepted by government security agents. His driver managed at some point to escape un-pursued; it was the priest they wanted. According to the driver’s testimony, Popieluszko was cuffed, beaten with clubs, gagged, and thrown into the trunk of one of the police cars that had cut him off. When he kept banging at the hood they opened the trunk and tied a rope around his neck and feet in such a way that if he moved his body he would choke to death. His body, which could have still been alive at the time, was thrown into the Vistula River. Ten days passed before it was found floating in the Wloclawek Reservoir. According to one priest, Father Groody [I have not been able to verify who he is?], who must have questioned or read the testimony of witnesses: “The body was covered with deep wounds. His face was unrecognizable, his jaw, nose, mouth and skull were smashed. He was identified by his brother from a birthmark to the side of his chest.” (Sunlit Uplands: “Remembering Father Jerzey Popieluszko on the Anniversary of His Death”) The mortician who performed the post mortem said that he had never seen internal organs so damaged. “There was blood in his lungs and his kidneys and [his] intestines were reduced to pulp.”
Father Jerzey Popieluszko’s funeral was one of the largest in the history of Poland. An estimated half million faithful attended it. His immediate killers, four policemen, were brought to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to a certain number of years in prison. The real executors, leading party members, like General Wojciech Jaruzelski, were, naturally, not implicated. Father Jerzey’s cause for beatification was introduced on February 8, 1997.
Some have objected, as they did with Saint Maximilian Kolbe, that Venerable Jerzey does not qualify as a martyr. They argue that the government allowed him to preach on religious topics, but it was only after he attacked the Communist regime that he was persecuted. This is false. Communism is anti-religion, and especially anti-Catholic. Religion is “the opiate of the people.” It is always the Church that Communists level their most intense hatred on. Why? Because Communism is satanic and the Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. Jerzey Popieluszko was killed in odium fidei (in hatred of the Faith), because he believed in, and celebrated, the Social Kingship of Christ and the spiritual authority of the Vicar of Christ, two authorities that the iron fist of Communism will not tolerate. Therefore, he is a martyr. He refused to give in to the Reds and confine Jesus only to a private church ceremony, be it even so infinitely propitiatory as the sacrifice of the Mass; he brought His Savior out into the market place, to the highways and byways of the factories, offering public outdoor Masses to crowds of thousands, healing souls, giving water to the thirsty, visiting the sick, and being a peacemaker. Satan and his minions were enraged. It was Christ whom the wicked spirits sought to kill in beating Father Popieluszko to a pulp, not some political human rights activist. These Polish Communists were not raised atheists. They were apostate Catholics with tormented consciences. It was their hatred of the Faith that led them to persecute the Church, not some love affair with Das Kapital.
I rest my case, and I eagerly wait the day when the pope, whoever he may be, begins canonizing the martyrs of Communist persecution. So far, there are only blesseds, not one of whom has yet been canonized.
