Friday, June 03, 2011

Poland remembers the "Primate of the Millennium"

Catholics in Poland celebrated the memory of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski on May 28, the 30th anniversary of the death of the iron-willed cardinal who had led the resistance to Communism. 

In Warsaw the papal nuncio, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, celebrated a Mass, at which the congregation prayed for the beatification of the “Primate of the Millennium.” Cardinal Wyszynski served as Archbishop of Warsaw and Primate of Poland from 1948 until his death in 1981. 

Imprisoned in 1953 during a government crackdown on Catholic resistance, he lived for months under house arrest. 

But he and the Polish Church endured to celebrate the Millennium of Polish Catholicism in 1966, and later to see the election of his fellow Polish cardinal, Karol Wojtyla, as Pope John Paul II.

At his Sunday public audience in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI advised visiting Polish pilgrims to imitate Cardinal Wyszynski especially in his “total abandonment to the Mother of God.”