Blessed Zbigniew Strzałkowski

He was born on July 3, 1958, in Tarnów. After elementary school he attended a technical high school for mechanics. For a year he worked in the trade he had learned. He entered the Franciscan novitiate in 1979. He was ordained a priest in Wrocław on June 7, 1986. For two years he was a formator and vice-rector of the Franciscan Minor Seminary in Legnica. He left for the missions in Peru on November 30, 1988.

He was a strong and courageous man. He cared for the sick. His desire to serve others flowed from his great faith and his wish to imitate Saint Maximilian Kolbe. He combined a talent for organization with great diligence and responsibility. Like Saint Francis of Assisi, he loved all creatures.

Together with Father Jarosław Wysoczański and Blessed Father Michał Tomaszek, he built up the Franciscan mission in Pariacoto, a small town in the Peruvian Andes. Religious sisters took care of evangelizing the local people. The missionaries carried out pastoral duties, administered the sacraments, ran courses for lay catechists, and traveled to fiestas in remote villages.

Besides their pastoral work, the missionaries engaged in charitable activity: they took part in the national and diocesan food programs of Caritas and supported schools and libraries. By drawing the attention of international organizations, they helped create a program of disease prevention and health care to stop a cholera epidemic. They obtained medicines for the local people and drove the infected to the city hospital themselves. They focused on education and social welfare and helped supply the surrounding villages with water and basic sanitation.

At the time of Father Zbigniew Strzałkowski’s ministry, Peru was not a safe country. Since 1980 the Communist Party of Peru “Sendero Luminoso” (Shining Path) had been terrorizing the country, seeking to seize power through revolution. After eleven years of fighting, the Senderistas were looking for a target whose attack could bring them publicity and make it easier for them to seize power. Their choice fell on the Church, or more precisely on the diocese where the Franciscans worked. A few weeks before the missionaries’ martyrdom, the bishop informed the priests at a diocesan meeting that the terrorists had demanded that all foreign priests leave the country. Yet none of them left; all remained with their people.

On August 9, 1991, terrorists of the Communist Party of Peru “Shining Path” abducted the missionaries from the friary and murdered them, claiming that they “humiliated the people by distributing food that came from the imperialists, that religion is the opium of the people, and that by preaching peace and carrying out evangelizing and charitable work they were lulling the people to sleep so that the masses would not rise up in revolution.”

The day after the beatification, December 6, 2015, the chapel of the martyrs’ tomb was opened in Pariacoto. The painting above the tomb shows images of the missionaries inspired by local devotion. In the painting, Father Zbigniew is dressing the wounds of a sick man. His parishioners called the missionary “the little doctor,” although he had no medical training. Now the faithful ask him for help with health problems.