Cardinal beatifies Polish priest who was sent to gulag

Cardinal Angelo Amato said Blessed Wladyslaw Bukowinski 'showed how faith can bring down walls'



Blessed Władysław Bukowiński

by Catholic News Service
posted Wednesday, 14 Sep 2016

A Vatican official beatified a Polish-born priest deported to Soviet-ruled Central Asia who volunteered to stay on and minister to Catholics.

Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes, said Fr Wladyslaw Bukowinski, who died in 1974, prayed to overcome “fear, hunger and violence, continuing his service at risk of being arrested and sent back to the gulag.”

“His trials before Soviet courts and his time in labour camps gave him a pulpit for witness and evangelisation, from which he taught love of God and neighbour, showing how faith could bring down walls,” Cardinal Amato said during the September 11 beatification Mass at Our Lady of Fatima Cathedral.

He said the priest had been a “courageous missionary of Christ in distant lands of Eastern Europe” and found “safety through faith in God and divine providence” at a time of religious persecution and “physical and moral suffering.”

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/09/14/cardinal-beatifies-polish-priest-who-was-sent-to-gulag/