Blessed Karolina Kózka

Blessed Karolina Kózka was a village girl from Wał-Ruda near Tarnów. At the age of sixteen she was killed by a soldier while defending her chastity. The Church venerates her as a virgin and martyr and commemorates her on November 18, the day of her death.

She was born on August 2, 1898, the fourth of the eleven children of Jan and Maria Kózka, farmers of modest means. She was baptized in the parish church at Radłów. At home the family prayed together in the evening and before meals, and every day they sang the Godzinki, the Little Hours in honor of the Mother of God. Neighbors gathered there to read Holy Scripture and the lives of the saints together and, in Lent, to sing the Gorzkie żale, the Bitter Lamentations on the Passion of the Lord. In the village the Kózka home was called “the little church.”

At elementary school Karolina was among the best pupils. She worked with her parents at home and in the fields; the neighbors used to say that work burned in her hands. She was never without the rosary her mother had given her. She received Holy Communion often, also on the first Fridays of the month.

She taught the catechism, which she knew better than others of her age, to her younger brothers and sisters and to the children of the neighborhood, and she gladly helped the elderly and the sick. She belonged to the Living Rosary, the Apostleship of Prayer, and the Temperance Society. She also helped her uncle, Franciszek Borzęcki, run the village library he had founded. From 1913 Wał-Ruda belonged to the parish of Zabawa, where Father Władysław Mendrala was the pastor. In May 1914 Karolina received the sacrament of Confirmation.

In the first months of the First World War Russian troops occupied the area. On November 18, 1914, an armed Russian soldier entered the Kózka home and ordered Karolina and her father to come out. He drove the father away, threatening him with his weapon, and forced the girl into the forest. Two boys from the village, hidden in the forest, saw her struggling free of him and running away. The soldier caught up with her after a long chase, and when she went on defending herself, he killed her with blows of his saber. Her body was found only on December 4. The many wounds showed how bravely she had fought; she had preserved her virginity.

The funeral drew crowds of people convinced that they were bidding farewell to a martyr. A cross was set up at the place of her death, and she herself came to be called “the star of the people.” On November 18, 1917, by decision of Bishop Leon Wałęga of Tarnów, Karolina’s body was moved from the cemetery to a tomb beside the church in Zabawa. In the years 1965-1967 Bishop Jerzy Ablewicz conducted the informative process.

Saint John Paul II confirmed her martyrdom by a decree of June 30, 1986, and on June 10, 1987, he beatified her in Tarnów during his pilgrimage to Poland. In his homily he said: “The saints exist to bear witness to the great dignity of man.” He added that Karolina, by her life and her death, speaks above all to the young and reminds us of the dignity of woman. The relics of the blessed rest beneath the main altar of the church in Zabawa, which today is her shrine.