Stefan Wyszyński (Polish pronunciation: [ˈstɛfan vɨˈʂɨj̃skʲi]; 3 August 1901 – 28 May 1981) was a Polish Roman Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Warsaw and Archbishop of Gniezno from 1948 to 1981. He previously served as Bishop of Lublin from 1946 to 1948. He was created a cardinal on 12 January 1953 by Pope Pius XII. As Archbishop of Gniezno, Wyszyński possessed the title "Primate of Poland".
The case for Wyszyński's canonization was opened in 1989. He is well known for his stands against both Nazism and Communism, and because of his connections to Pope John Paul II; he played a key role in urging Wojtyła to accept being elected as pope. Pope Francis beatified Wyszyński on 12 September 2021.
Wyszyński was the spiritual leader of the Polish nation, credited with the survival of Polish Christianity in the face of repression and persecution during the Communist regime, especially in the Stalinist period from 1947 to 1956. He himself was imprisoned for three years, and is held by some as one of Poland's national heroes.
Wyszyński was born in the village of Zuzela in eastern Mazovia on the Bug River. During the Partitions of Poland, this area was part of the Russian Empire (more specifically, Congress Poland) until the end of the First World War. The Wyszyński family counted itself among the nobility of Poland (the szlachta), with the coat of arms of Trzywdar and the title of baron, although it was not materially well off.
Wyszyński's mother died when he was nine. In 1912, his father sent him to Warsaw. In the years 1914–1916 Stefan attended the high-school in Łomża. The following year he enrolled in the seminary in Włocławek, and on his 23rd birthday (3 August 1924), after being hospitalised with a serious illness, he received his priestly ordination from Bishop Wojciech Stanisław Owczarek.
Wyszyński celebrated his first Solemn High Mass of Thanksgiving, at Jasna Góra in Częstochowa, a place of special spiritual significance for many Catholic Poles. The Pauline monastery there holds the icon of the Black Madonna, or Our Lady of Częstochowa, the patron saint and guardian of Poland. Wyszyński spent the next four years in Lublin, where in 1929 he received a doctorate at the Faculty of Canon Law and the Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Lublin. His dissertation in Canon Law was entitled The Rights of the Family, Church and State to Schools. For several years after graduation he traveled throughout Europe, where he furthered his education.
After returning to Poland, Wyszyński began teaching at the seminary in Włocławek. When the Second World War broke out with the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he was forced to leave Włocławek because he was wanted by the Gestapo: he had written articles critical of the Nazis in a Catholic journal. At the request of Bishop Kozal, he went to Laski near Warsaw. When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on 1 August 1944, he adopted the nom de guerre "Radwan II" and became chaplain of the insurgents' hospital in Laski, and of the Żoliborz military district of the Armia Krajowa, the Polish underground resistance organisation.
During the Nazi occupation of Poland, Wyszyński aided several Jews. In autumn 1941, the future cardinal took shelter from the Gestapo at the Żułów estate, run by Franciscan nuns. While there, he and another man helped hide a widowed Jewish labourer and his two children – who would be denounced by a Ukrainian nationalist and killed by the Germans in October/November 1942, five months after the liquidation of the local ghetto in Kraśniczyn – in an attic. Additionally, Esther Grinberg, in her testimony held at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem, credits the Polish assistance that saved her life to Wyszyński's veiled injunction, possibly in a sermon, to rescue "those running from the fire".
In 1945, a year after the end of war in the area, Wyszyński returned to Włocławek, where he started a restoration project for the devastated seminary, becoming its rector as well as the chief editor of a Catholic weekly.
Just a year later, on 25 March 1946, Pope Pius XII appointed him Bishop of Lublin; he was consecrated by Cardinal August Hlond on 12 May that year.
Asked by delegates of the Central Committee of Polish Jews to condemn the Kielce pogrom of 4 July 1946, bishop Wyszyński explained the massacre as popular retribution for Jewish participation in the new Communist government, adding that "the Germans wanted to exterminate the Jewish nation because the Jews spread Communism" (see Żydokomuna). He also claimed that Jewish books consulted during trial of Beilis had not dispelled the accusations of ritual murder, and demanded that the Jews leave Poland. Nevertheless, these accusations have been challenged. In her biography of the cardinal, Ewa K. Czaczkowska writes that such an interpretation of Wyszyński's meeting with the Central Committee of Polish Jews is selective, as a full reading of the protocols from the meeting contains the following: "The bishop condemns all forms of murder from the perspective of Christian ethics, and in the specific case of Kielce he has nothing to add or condemn in particular because the Church always supports the ideal of condemning evil."
Meanwhile, in a letter published in The Times Wyszyński wrote to a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor who attended the unveiling of the Majdanek memorial: "We have seen among us the common suffering of the war deluge the children of Israel. We have felt with them in their agony and wherever possible we helped them in the common prison which Poland was then, occupied by the invaders. We believe that these sufferings will bring forth the blessed fruit of a better life. Today we rejoice that the martyrs of Maidenek [sic] are honored with a memorial. Let these stones cry to heaven for a durable peace on earth and a mutual love between nations."
After Hlond's death on 22 October 1948, Wyszyński was named Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw, and thus Primate of Poland, on 12 November 1948. As the cardinal lay dying, he had asked that Wyszyński's name be forwarded to Rome as a potential replacement.
Post-war resistance to Communism
World War II ended in 1945; however, beginning in the eastern portion of present-day Poland, and later in the west, hostilities continued for several years between a large segment of Poles and the Stalinist government. The Catholic Church hoped for the return of the Polish government-in-exile from London and the removal of Stalin's puppet regime; it actively supported the anti-Communists. One of the prime issues was the confiscation of church property by the Communist government. In 1950, Wyszyński decided to enter into a secret agreement with the Communist authorities, which was signed on 14 April 1950 by the Polish episcopate and the government. The agreement settled the political disputes of the church versus the government in Poland. It allowed the church to hold onto "reasonable" property, separated the church from politics, and even allowed authorities to select a bishop from a list of three candidates.
Beginning in 1953, another wave of persecution swept Poland. The bishops continued their support for anti-Communist resistance, the government began holding mass trials and imprisoning priests. In February 1953 the regime issued a decree which made Church appointments subject to regime approval as well as requiring oath of allegiance. The episcopate, including Wyszyński, released a non possumus where they made their opposition clear. Subsequently Bishop Czesław Kaczmarek was arrested and Wyszyński was asked to condemn him. On 25 September 1953 he was imprisoned at Rywałd, and later placed under house arrest in Stoczek Klasztorny near Lidzbark Warmiński, in Prudnik near Opole and in the Komańcza monastery in the Bieszczady Mountains. While imprisoned, he observed the brutal torture and mistreatment of detainees, some of it highly perverse in nature. He was released on 26 October 1956 following Polish October.
Cardinal and Primate of Poland