ROME — President Donald Trump released a statement Wednesday commemorating the 40th anniversary of the martyrdom of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Catholic priest who helped bring down communism in Poland.
“Father Jerzy was a Roman Catholic priest, a Polish patriot, a champion for workers, and a heroic messenger of the Gospel, who valiantly sacrificed his life for God, his country, and for all people who yearn to live in freedom,” Trump said in the statement.
“For his steadfast fidelity to God, he was viciously beaten to death by agents of the communist secret police,” Trump notes of the celebrated former chaplain of Poland’s Solidarity Movement.
Trump also observes that through his martyrdom, Father Jerzy helped “crush Communism in Europe and liberate not only his fellow Poles, but millions of people across the Captive Nations of Europe,” which included many brave clergy, chaplains, and laymen who “refused to bend the knee to the sinister lies and deceit of Marxism.”
File/Original Caption/ The Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko whose body was found Tuesday, October 30th in the waters of Vistula River is shown. He was kidnapped by three Interior Ministry employees eleven days ago. Here he is seen preaching during one of his famous masses for the motherland in St. Stanislaw Kostka Church in Warsaw. (Getty)
In his statement, Trump holds up the example of Father Jerzy as pivotal for understanding how communism was eventually brought down.
“For this reason, every patriot, every freedom lover, every student of history, and every soul of faith, who seeks to understand how atheistic communism was defeated in Europe, and how evil is overcome with good, should remember the name, and cherish the immortal story, of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko,” he writes.
Trump also praises the Polish prelate as a hero of conscience, who refused to bow to the atheist powers who wanted to silence the witness to God.
With every word he preached from the pulpit, Trump writes, “communist forces grew more and more determined to stop his public witness, cripple his energy, and crush the Solidarity Movement he helped embolden,” but in Father Jerzy they found a resistance they could not overcome.
Perhaps reflecting on the similar abuse he has borne, Trump notes that the young priest was “subjected to relentless censorship, surveillance, harassment, and intimidation by the communist regime.”
Fie/Original Caption/ Pro-Solidarity priest Jerzy Popieluszeo, 37, was abducted on the road from his car by two unspecified individuals Friday night. Recently he met Solidarity founder Lech Walesa (l) and father Henryk Jankowski (C) in Gdansk and the crowd gave him a heroe’s welcome for his campaigning to revive the outlawed union. (Getty)
“His phone was tapped. His car was tailed. A bomb was thrown into his home. The government’s propagandists in the press vilified him for speaking out against ‘the supreme organs of the state’ and for ‘turning churches into places for anti-state propaganda,’” Trump observes.
Father Jerzy was beaten to death on October 19, 1984, so the 40th anniversary of his martyrdom falls on next Saturday. Wednesday, however, marks the anniversary of the election of John Paul II to the papacy in 1978 — the first Polish pope in history — and Trump decided to release the commemorative statement on this date.
“As Americans, we stand with Poland in defense of freedom, human dignity, the rule of law, sovereign borders, national independence, and Western Civilization,” Trump writes. “We share the conviction that religion and morality, and a culture open to God, are indispensable to just government and political prosperity.”
