Blessed Bolesław Strzelecki

Blessed Bolesław Strzelecki was a priest of the Diocese of Sandomierz, to which Radom then belonged, and pastor of the parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Glinice district of Radom. Because of his care for the poor, the people of the city called him the Saint Francis of Radom. He died in the German concentration camp of Auschwitz. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on May 2, the day of his death.

He was born in 1896 in Poniemoń. He spent his childhood in the parish of Jastrząb near Szydłowiec, where his family’s grave is located. He entered the seminary in Sandomierz and, after completing his studies, was ordained a priest. He spent the most important years of his ministry in Radom.

There he was a school prefect, that is, a catechist in the schools, an inspector of religious instruction, and a confessor to religious sisters. He also served devotedly as a prison chaplain. In 1935 he became rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity. He found the church badly neglected and saw to its restoration.

In 1940, during the German occupation, he took charge of the parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Glinice. The new parish church was not yet finished, and the faithful prayed in a makeshift chapel. The war was quickly plunging people into poverty. The pastor organized a soup kitchen for the poor and himself handed out bread to the neediest. The place where he gave it out came to be called the House of Bread.

The Germans arrested him on January 7, 1941, as he was distributing bread to the poor after Mass. The Roman Martyrology says that he was imprisoned for his faith. In the Radom prison he was interrogated and tortured, and on April 5, 1941, he was taken to the Auschwitz camp. There he kept up the spirits of his fellow prisoners. He begged bread for the most exhausted and shared with them whatever he received.

He died in the camp hospital on May 2, 1941, worn out by hunger and torture, after being beaten with an oak club. His body was burned in the crematorium, so he has no grave. In 1950 the people of Radom placed a plaque in the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that calls him a priest of great zeal and extraordinary kindness of heart, a protector of the poor and the unfortunate.

The decree of the Holy See on the martyrdom of 108 Servants of God from the time of the Second World War, issued on March 26, 1999, states that Father Bolesław died as a result of torture. On June 13, 1999, in Warsaw, Pope John Paul II beatified the whole group, Father Strzelecki among them. He is the patron of the parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Radom, where he was pastor.