Thomas Rosica: A Martyr to Solidarity
[Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, chief executive officer of the Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation and Television Network in Canada, is a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.]
For Catholics and Christians, the Eucharist is truly the sacrament of non-violence: The way of Jesus to conquer evil and violence must be the Christian way.
This reality was lived out in the life of a young Polish priest, Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko who was beatified as a martyr Sunday, on the feast of Corpus Christi, in Warsaw’s Pilsudski Square.
Father Popieluszko was kidnapped and killed by security agents in 1984 after several years of work with Poland’s Solidarity movement, his body later found in a reservoir.
He was born Sept. 14, 1947, in the village of Okopy in eastern Poland, member of a strong Roman Catholic family. His seminary training was interrupted by two years of military service, during which he was beaten several times for living his Christian faith.
After ordination, the young priest, who never enjoyed good health, held several appointments before his final appointment to the parish of St. Stanislaw Kostka in Warsaw. He worked part-time in the parish, which enabled him to work as well with medical personnel. As a result of his close work with health-care personnel, he was asked to organize the medical teams during Pope John Paul II’s visits to Poland in 1979 and Warsaw in 1983.
August, 1980, saw the beginning of the Solidarity trade union. Workers from the Warsaw steel plant, who were on strike in support of the shipyards on the Baltic Sea, requested a priest to say mass for them. The lot fell to Father Popieluszko. He stayed with the workers night and day. Solidarity represented for him a vision that he had first learnt from St. Maximilian Kolbe: that of spiritual freedom amidst physical enslavement....
Read entire article at Globe and Mail
For Catholics and Christians, the Eucharist is truly the sacrament of non-violence: The way of Jesus to conquer evil and violence must be the Christian way.
This reality was lived out in the life of a young Polish priest, Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko who was beatified as a martyr Sunday, on the feast of Corpus Christi, in Warsaw’s Pilsudski Square.
Father Popieluszko was kidnapped and killed by security agents in 1984 after several years of work with Poland’s Solidarity movement, his body later found in a reservoir.
He was born Sept. 14, 1947, in the village of Okopy in eastern Poland, member of a strong Roman Catholic family. His seminary training was interrupted by two years of military service, during which he was beaten several times for living his Christian faith.
After ordination, the young priest, who never enjoyed good health, held several appointments before his final appointment to the parish of St. Stanislaw Kostka in Warsaw. He worked part-time in the parish, which enabled him to work as well with medical personnel. As a result of his close work with health-care personnel, he was asked to organize the medical teams during Pope John Paul II’s visits to Poland in 1979 and Warsaw in 1983.
August, 1980, saw the beginning of the Solidarity trade union. Workers from the Warsaw steel plant, who were on strike in support of the shipyards on the Baltic Sea, requested a priest to say mass for them. The lot fell to Father Popieluszko. He stayed with the workers night and day. Solidarity represented for him a vision that he had first learnt from St. Maximilian Kolbe: that of spiritual freedom amidst physical enslavement....