On Monday, for the 17th time, the Polish Nationwide Day of Polish Clergy Martyrdom will be celebrated on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp in Dachau,” recalls the press office of the Polish Episcopal Conference.
The Day of Polish Clergy Martyrdom, established by the Episcopate in 2002, is a continuation of the annual thanksgiving of priests - prisoners of Dachau. Fearing the liquidation of the camp, they trusted St. Joseph and vowed that if they survived, they would make annual pilgrimages to St. Joseph’s Church in Kalisz.
The camp was liberated on 29 April 1945. The surviving priests from Poland had been fulfilling their vows until the end of their lives and were making a pilgrimage to Kalisz, thanking for their salvation. The last of them, Father Leon Stępniak, died in 2013. Currently, pilgrimages to St. Joseph’s Shrine on the occasion of the Polish Clergy Martyrdom Day are an expression of remembrance of those who were imprisoned
— recalls the press office of the Polish episcopate.
The culminating point of this year’s ceremony will be a mass in the Basilica of St. Joseph in Kalisz, which on Monday, 29 April at 12 noon will be presided over by Archbishop Grzegorz Ryś, Metropolitan of Łódź. On the eve of this event, a mass was celebrated in the Chapel of Martyrdom and Gratitude and the passage to the monument of John Paul II took place.
On April 29, 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the German concentration camp in Dachau, bishops and priests from all over Poland made pilgrimages to this place.
Dachau was the main camp for Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox clergy. Among the approximately three thousand imprisoned monks, deacons, priests and Catholic bishops, nearly 1800 came from Poland. Almost half of them were tortured in the camp, most of them in the dioceses of Poznań (147), Włocławek (144) and Łódź (112). Of the nearly 600 monks, the Jesuits, missionaries and Salesians constituted the largest group of victims.
KZ Dachau is the „Golgotha of the Polish clergy”. During World War II, almost 3,000 Polish priests died at the hands of the occupants.
Tłum. K.J.
Publikacja dostępna na stronie: https://wpolityce.pl/facts-from-poland/445465-every-fifth-diocesan-priest-in-poland-was-murdered-in-wwii
