WelCom November 2024
Forty years after the murder of Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko, Polish Catholics are urging people everywhere to revisit and learn from his heroic testimony.
‘He was treated as a criminal and killed by state agents for daring to proclaim the Gospel,’ explained Fr Jan Sochon, a childhood friend.
‘Though times have changed, some of the mechanisms used to rule over people are still in place today. This is why he remains influential, a sign of the times summoning us to reflect and change,’ he said.
Fr Sochon spoke ahead of 40th anniversary commemorations of the death of Blessed Popieluszko (1947–1984), chaplain of Poland’s Solidarity union. Jerzy Popieluszko was brutally murdered by officers of Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa – communist Poland’s security service.
Ewa Czaczkowska, a biographer of the priest, said his cult remained strong among Solidarity veterans, but had also been passed on to younger people raised after communist rule.
‘Father Jerzy is still alive – not just in the memory of those who encountered him all those years ago, but also in the contemporary imagination.
‘Large numbers still visit his grave, and turn to him at moments of personal crisis, while his teachings about solidarity, justice, mutual respect and living in truth remain relevant today in very different circumstances,’ she said.
The bound and gagged body of 37-year-old Fr Popieluszko, known nationwide for homilies defending human rights, was dredged from a Vistula River reservoir on 20 October 1984, 11 days after he was abducted while returning overnight from a Mass in Bydgoszcz.
The priest’s funeral, the largest in Polish history, was attended by between 600,000 and a million people at Warsaw’s St Stanislaus Kostka Church, where his grave has since been visited by 23 million. Fr Popieluszko was beatified in June 2010.
Source: Catholic Review