Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko

Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko was a priest of the Archdiocese of Warsaw, a pastor to workers, and a chaplain of the Solidarity trade union. In 1984, at the age of 37, he was murdered by officers of the communist Security Service. The Church commemorates him on October 19, the day of his death.

He was born on September 14, 1947, in the village of Okopy near Suchowola in the Podlasie region, into the farming family of Władysław and Marianna. At baptism he was given the name Alfons, which he later changed to Jerzy. In 1965 he entered the seminary in Warsaw. After a year he was drafted for two years into the army, into a special unit for seminarians at Bartoszyce. There he was harassed because he would not take off his rosary.

He was ordained a priest on May 28, 1972, by Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. He served as a parochial vicar at Ząbki and in Warsaw parishes, and as a chaplain to health care workers and students. His health was failing, and so in 1980 he became a priest in residence at the parish of Saint Stanislaus Kostka in the Żoliborz district of Warsaw.

In August 1980 he celebrated Mass for the striking workers of the Warsaw Steelworks, and from then on he remained their pastor. After martial law was imposed he helped the internees and their families. From February 1982 he celebrated the monthly Masses for the Homeland in Żoliborz, to which thousands of people came from all over Poland. In his homilies he defended religious freedom, human rights, and justice. He repeated after Saint Paul that evil must be overcome with good.

The authorities responded with a campaign of slander, interrogations, and arrest, and threats came as well. He knew he was risking his life, yet he said that he could not abandon the people who through him were hearing the teaching of the Church, and that he had to stay with them to the end. On October 13, 1984, a first attempt on his life failed.

On October 19, 1984, he led the rosary meditations in the Church of the Holy Polish Brothers Martyrs in Bydgoszcz. He ended them by asking for prayer that people might be free from fear and intimidation, and above all from the desire for revenge and violence. On the way back, near Górsk outside Toruń, he was abducted by three officers of the Security Service. He was brutally beaten and killed, and his body, weighted with stones, was thrown into the Vistula at the dam in Włocławek, from which it was recovered on October 30. His funeral on November 3 brought hundreds of thousands of people to the Church of Saint Stanislaus Kostka in Warsaw, where Father Jerzy was laid to rest.

The beatification process began in Warsaw in 1997. In December 2009 Benedict XVI recognized his martyrdom, and on June 6, 2010, Father Jerzy was declared blessed in Warsaw. Archbishop Angelo Amato presided at the celebration in the pope’s name. The apostolic letter calls him a steadfast and tireless witness of Christ who overcame evil with good to the shedding of his blood. The Church in Poland prays for his canonization.