Blessed Józef Kurzawa and Wincenty Matuszewski

Blessed Józef Kurzawa and Wincenty Matuszewski were the pastors of the parish of the Protection of the Mother of God in Osięciny, in Kuyavia, in the diocese of Włocławek. Wincenty was its parish priest, and Józef his curate. In the night after the Corpus Christi procession of 1940, the German occupiers took them from the rectory and shot them near the village of Witowo. The Roman Martyrology commemorates them together on May 23, because the acts of the Holy See give that day as the date of their death.

Wincenty Matuszewski was born on March 3, 1869, in the area of Kutno, and was ordained a priest in 1895. He served in Widawa, Nieszawa, and Częstochowa, among other places, and in 1918 he became parish priest of Osięciny. His parishioners remembered him as a priest who spent long hours in the confessional, taught religion to children, and helped the poorest. The Jews and Germans of Osięciny also held him in respect. As his health declined, from 1932 he was given curates to help him.

Józef Kurzawa was born on January 6, 1910, near Kalisz. He entered the seminary in Włocławek and was ordained a priest in June 1936. On August 1 of that year he became curate in Osięciny and religion teacher at the local school. He played soccer and volleyball with the young people, sang well, and preached sermons that his parishioners remembered.

In September 1939 the Germans entered Osięciny. When they took more than twenty hostages, the parish priest was among them. He refused the blanket and pillow brought to him, because he wanted to share the lot of his fellow prisoners. In the spring of 1940 the rectory was searched at night on the orders of the new commissarial mayor and the head of the local police, on the pretext of looking for weapons. The former mayor warned the priests, but the parish priest is said to have answered: “I will not leave you, children.” He urged the young curate to go away. Józef left, but soon came back, because he did not want to leave the parish priest alone.

On May 23, 1940, the solemnity of Corpus Christi, the priests led a Eucharistic procession through Osięciny. In the evening they were warned again. After midnight the mayor and the police chief took both priests from the rectory to a car. Witnesses saw Józef shielding the parish priest from the blows with his own body. On the road to Witowo the priests were shot, and their bodies were left in a ditch by the road. Many parishioners believed that they were killed in reprisal for that procession. They were buried in a single grave in the cemetery of Osięciny.

From the beginning the faithful came to pray at their grave, and later they were called martyrs of the Eucharist and of priestly unity. John Paul II beatified them on June 13, 1999, in Warsaw among the 108 martyrs of the Second World War, whose common memorial he set for June 12. In his homily he spoke of priests who died because they would not abandon their ministry. In 2001 their remains were moved to the parish church in Osięciny.