Card. Stefan Wyszyński

On June 7, 2020, Stefan Card. Wyszyński was scheduled to be beatified in Poland. Unfortunately, due to the Coronavirus situation the ceremony is postponed. His long awaited elevation will take in Warsaw, precisely in the same place, called Plac Zwycięstwa, where he, as Primate of Poland greeted Pope John Paul II, when the Pontiff came to visit Poland for the first time, after his election to the highest post in the Catholic Church.

Stefan Wyszyński was born on August 3, 1901 in the village of Zuzela in Eastern Mazovia on the Bug River. Wyszyński's mother died when he was nine and in 1912, his father sent him to Warsaw to continue his education. In the years 1914-1916 Stefan attended the high-school in Lomza and in the following year he enrolled in the seminary in Włocławek, and on his 24th birthday.

Father 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, Poland.

On March 4, 1946, pope Pius XII appointed him Bishop of Lublin. He served as the bishop of Lublin from 1946 to 1948. On November 12, 1948, he was named Metropolitan Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw, and thus Primate of Poland. He was created a Cardinal on January 12, 1953 by pope Pius XII as the Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Stefan Wyszyński was often called the "Primate of the Millennium" in Poland.

On September 25, 1953 the communist regime decided to put him under the house arrest in revenge for the calls for resistance against the totalitarian system . He was released after three years, following the events of the so-called "Polish October" and the end of Stalinism in 1956. Immediately after, he initiated the national pastoral program, leading to spiritual renewal of Poles, as a preparation for the millennial celebration of Poland's Christianisation in 966. this program also was under pressure and attacks of Communist government.

The election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as Pope in 1979 is considered one of greatest life achievements of Cardinal Wyszyński. He died on May 28, 1981, at the age of 79, loosing a battle to abdominal cancer. Hundreds of thousands of Poles participated in Cardinal Wyszyński's funeral, which turned into a patriotic manifestation against the communist regime, leading to the rise of the Solidarity movement and then the final fall of Communism in Poland in 1898. Pope John Paul II was not able to participate due to recovery after the prior attack on his life.