No Cd Age Of Empires 2.0a

Twenty years ago, the communist secret services murdered father Popieluszko, which became the symbol of free Poland

Don Jerzy the respondent

Chaplain Solidarnosc was only 37 years.
Behind the face as a teenager, an iron will and passion for truth

Louis Geninazzi
Future October 19, 2004

For Poland was a moment of great sorrow and pride made. For the Communist regime just the beginning of the end. On October 19, twenty years ago Father Jerzy Popieluszko was kidnapped and murdered by three secret service agents who, after having beaten up, threw him into the icy waters of the Vistula. Today, on the road that leads from Torun in Warsaw, at the point where he was kidnapped, there is a cross of tree, with the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa. Yellow disturbing Poland held its breath for two weeks. The news of the abduction of Father Jerzy was the driver, Waldemar Chrostowski, a former paratrooper who managed to jump out of the car of the kidnappers and disappear into the woods. For many days he continued to hope that "the chaplain of Solidarity" was still alive. Until, October 27, Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski eyed ice confessed: "I killed myself with my hands." The body will then be found in the artificial lake formed by the dam at Wloclawek, a hundred miles north of Warsaw. The shock was immense, but the Polish nation confronted him without giving in to anger or violence, remembering the words that Father Jerzy used to say: "We must overcome evil with good." Who was Don Popieluszko? "A political fanatic, a Savonarola of anti-communism, a typical example of militant clericalism" had called the government spokesman Jerzy Urban (now editor of a satirical magazine-porn). His name, along with other priests close to Solidarity, was on a blacklist, which was submitted to the ecclesiastical authorities with a view to deportation. For Father Jerzy loomed over a period of study in Rome, away from the workers of the Huta Warszawa steel works which had been assigned as a chaplain after August 1980, date of birth of the free trade union. But the Vatican intervened and Don Popieluszko stood in his place. He was only 37 years old and had already become a symbol for Poles, despite modest physical appearance and sickly. It was a pure heart that behind the face as a teenager hid an iron will and a passion for the unconditional truth. It was not a politician, rather it showed all too shy and reserved. Once when I asked him flatly refused an interview: "I'm just a poor priest. If you want to know how I come to hear what I say to the faithful. " It was there, packed to capacity in the church of St. Stanislaus Kostka, the working-class neighborhood of Zoliborz in Warsaw, Father Jerzy once a month celebrated the "Mass for the Fatherland", a tradition going back to the nineteenth century when Poland Stateless defended his identity refuge under the mantle of Catholic Church. "Since the establishment of martial law (introduced in December 1981, ed) there has been deprived of the freedom of speech, we hear the voice of our heart and our conscience," he said, calling on the Poles' to live in the truth of the children of God does not lie in the tax regime. " In addition to great courage, the little Father Jerzy was with humor. At the conclusion of Mass for the country asked the faithful to pray "for those who have come here for professional duty," embarrassing the spies of Sb, the security service, who were in church at home as a deaf-mute to a rock concert. They had decided to make him pay dearly. They started with the threats, followed by a search that led to the "discovery" of explosive material in canonical order for the arrest of the "subversive priest." He kept his smile on the sad little boy. Until the night of October 19, the mangled mouth after having smashed his skull with truncheon blows. A bestial crime committed with ferocity, told in gruesome detail the murder during a dramatic process. The principals were never judged. The defendants were convicted but had the sentence reduced, and all have already come out of prison. It is sad to say, but it seems that the heinous crimes of that regime have remained buried under the rubble of communism. Don Jerzy instead continues to live: on his grave go on pilgrimage to millions who revere him as a witness to the moral and spiritual strength of the Polish nation. Since 1997 is currently the cause of beatification, which now seems close to conclusion. Hero of the freedom of faith and witness, Don Popieluszko appears to us as "the true prophet of Europe, one that affirms life through death," said John Paul II. A message more timely than ever twenty years after his martyrdom.

(Future) 20 years ago, the Martyrs of Father Jerzy