Saint of the day October 19: Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko. Catholic Saints

The Church in Poland recalled that today we commemorate the blessed priest and martyr Jerzy Popieluszko, an “ardent pastor of the working class and the health service”, who was tortured and murdered by agents of the Polish communist dictatorship in 1984.

“Between 1980 and 1984 he celebrated ‘Holy Masses for the Fatherland’ in the church of Saint (Stanislaus) Kostka in Warsaw. He was assassinated in 1984 by security service officers,” says the Polish episcopate on its Twitter account.

Jerzy Popieluszko was born on September 14, 1947 into a humble family, in a small town in northeastern Poland.

As a seminarian, he resisted the “socialist reeducation” to which all seminarians were subjected during the two years of compulsory military service and He became a spiritual and moral leader among his companions.

After his priestly ordination on May 28, 1972, he accompanied the medical students of Warsaw as a chaplain and the health personnel as a priest responsible for this area of ​​health pastoral care in Warsaw.

In August 1980 he began his apostolic work with the workers, actively accompanying the workers of the newly created Catholic workers union Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa.

Father Popieluszko’s sermons were broadcast by Radio Free Europe, which made him famous throughout Poland for his critical stance against the communist dictatorship.

The pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) remember that the priest “offered a response of faith to injusticetorture and the violation of fundamental human rights, in the face of imposed atheism and immorality, in the face of the subjugation and violence suffered by the people.

“He expounded the social doctrine of the Church, cited the social encyclicals and the speeches of Pope John Paul II and the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. He thus became one of the most representative spiritual and moral leaders of the Polish resistance in the face of communist unreason and brutality,” he adds.

The Polish secret police tried to silence and intimidate him. When they saw that these techniques would not work, they fabricated evidence against him and arrested him in 1983, but he was soon released through the intervention of the clergy.

The priest’s fighting attitude and his great ability to influence the faithful from his Warsaw parish ended the patience of the regime, which ordered his kidnapping and murder in October 1984.

They originally planned a car “accident” to kill him on the 13th, but the priest managed to escape alive. The alternative plan was the kidnapping, which occurred a week later, on the 19th, and he was also tortured by three officers.

Still alive, he was thrown into the reservoir of the Vistula River, with a sack tied to him with stones so that he would not float. His remains were only recovered on October 30.

In your last masscelebrated on October 19, 1984, the priest encouraged the faithful to “ask to be freed from fear, from terror, but above all from the desire for revenge.”

“We must defeat evil with good and keep our dignity as men intact.. This is why we cannot use violence,” Father Popieluszko urged.

The news of the murder of the priest, only 37 years old, shocked the entire country. More than 250,000 people attended Father Jerzy’s funeral on November 3, including Lech Walesa, who by then had already won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Father Popieluszko was beatified on June 6, 2010 in Warsaw, in a massive Mass in which half a million faithful participated and which was concelebrated by 100 bishops and more than 1,500 priests.

“Father Popieluszko is beatified as an example of the defense of rights and human dignity, also as a model of dialogue and reconciliation,” said the then Archbishop of Warsaw, Mons. Kazimierz Nycz, on that occasion.

On the same June 6 and from Cyprus, the Pope Benedict XVI sent “a cordial greeting to the Church in Poland, which today rejoices with the elevation to the altars of Father Jerzy Popieluszko.”

“His zealous service and martyrdom are a special sign of the triumph of good over evil. May his example and intercession increase the dedication of priests and encourage charity in the faithful,” Benedict XVI highlighted.