On 15 October 2024, the Gregorian University in Rome hosted a conference entitled ‘From this Death Good Has Grown. The 40th Anniversary of the Murder of Fr Jerzy Popieluszko’. The session was opened by the Polish Ambassador to the Holy See, Adam Kwiatkowski, and Dr Andrzej Sznajder, director of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) branch in Katowice.
Historian Dr Jakub Gołębiewski addressed the topic of ‘the activities of the secret services against Fr Popieluszko’. He noted, among other things, that Fr Jerzy’s murder coincided with changes at the top of power in the USSR (J. Andropov / K. Chernienko). There were also tensions among the communist authorities in Poland. The general Miroslaw Milewski sought to seize power. It was hoped that the assassination of Fr Popieluszko would provoke social unrest, the pacification of which would lead to the seizure of power by a radical current even more closely subordinate to the Moscow authorities.
‘Death in the Orwellian year 1984: the victory of Fr Jerzy’ – is the title of a paper delivered by Dr Andrzej Grajewski of the Catholic Weekly ‘Gość Niedzielny’. ‘When the political and social context of those events had become blurred, their metaphysical dimension became more visible – the clash of evangelical good and evil,’ the author stressed. There were many parallels between Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’ and the reality of communist Poland, but one significant difference. In Poland of those years, an important component was faith and the Church, which added meaning to the struggle against the totalitarian system. It was in Fr Popieluszko’s sermons that people found the meaning of the words and the sources of the values defended. Fr Jerzy’s martyrdom contributed to the fact that ‘events in Poland turned out differently from Orwell’s novel’, as the totalitarian system collapsed.
The theme of Fr Popieluszko’s moral victory was taken up by Dr Ewa Czaczkowska: ‘To remain a spiritually free man, one must live in freedom. Fr Popieluszko’s message to people and to the world’. This is evidenced by the cult spread throughout the world and the numerous conversions associated with the impact of the testimony of his life. The speaker stressed that his example shows the prophetic sense of St Paul’s motto: ‘Conquer evil with good’. His sermons express the vital connection between truth and freedom and teach how to realise these two key values in individual and social life when human rights are violated openly or in a camouflaged manner.
The conference was organised by the Katowice Branch of the Institute of National Remembrance, the Editorial Board of the ‘Gość Niedzielny’ and the Centre for the Documentation and Study of the Pontificate (Vatican John Paul II Foundation).
Andrzej Dobrzyński