Preview: 100th Anniversaries for Sts. John of Arc and John Paul II

On Monday, February 24, I'll talk with either Matt Swaim (it might be his turn!) or Anna Mitchell about another set of anniversaries to be remembered in 2020: the 100th anniversary of the Canonization of St. Joan of Arc and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, now Pope St. John Paul II.

Both saints are national heroes: St. Joan of Arc in France; St. John Paul II in Poland.

The City of Rouen, where Joan of Arc was tried, convicted, condemned, and burned to death on May 30, 1431 is celebrating the 100th anniversary of her canonization with many events in this Year of Joan of Arc. Orleans, France, which she liberated on May 8, 1429, celebrates her every year with a festival from April 28 to May 8, but is also commemorating the anniversary, as is New Orleans, Louisiana, including a new production of Tchaikovsky's opera! In typical secular fashion, New Orleans celebrates its patron saint on her birthday, not her feast day.

Joan of Arc had been condemned as a heretic by a pro-English ecclesiastical court in 1431; a rehabilitation trial was held in Paris and she was declared innocent of all the charges on July 7, 1456. Her trial in Rouen had violated Canon Law in many ways: Joan's appeals to the Pope had been ignored; she'd not been held in the custody of cloistered nuns as she should have been, etc. Her mother was still alive and saw her daughter vindicated.

She was beatified in Rome on April 18, 1909 by Pope Saint Pius X; Pope Benedict XV issued his Papal Bull Divina Disponente and she was canonized in Rome on May 16, 1920. In the document, the pope refers to the evils of the First World War from which France was still recovering in 1920. The Treaty of Versailles had just come into effect; images of Joan of Arc had been carried into the trenches; the churches throughout France, the names of the dead from that war are inscribed in chapels, often with a statue of St. Joan of Arc near them. Her canonization was a great event for the French people, even after the official separation of Church and State in 1905.

The centenary of Pope St. John Paul II's birth as Karol Wojtyla on May 18, 1920 is being celebrated in Poland with great rejoicing and prayer: a nine month national novena was begun in 2019:

On the occasion of the upcoming 100th anniversary of the birth of Pope-Pole the national novena started in the newly built Shrine of John Paul II in Radzymin. Each month, on the 18th day, in the Shrine the prayers in the intention of families and our Homeland will be sent to God. The Shrine received over 3, 5 thousand intentions.

The national Novena through the intercession of the Saint John Paul II will end on May 18, 2020, exactly on the 100th anniversary of Karol Wojtyła’s birth.

According to the Catholic News Service, Pope Francis has contributed comments and analysis to a book (in Italian) about Pope St. John Paul II that declares him "The Great" (unofficially):

St. John Paul II taught the world that truly great faith and holiness dwell in "the normality of a person who lives in profound communion with Christ," Pope Francis said in a new book.

Precisely because he allowed people to see he was a human being -- whether skiing or praying, hiking or suffering -- "every gesture of his, every word, every choice he made always had a much deeper value and left a mark," Pope Francis told Father Luigi Maria Epicoco, author of the Italian book "San Giovanni Paolo Magno" ("St. John Paul the Great").

The book, published by Edizioni San Paolo and set for release Feb. 11, was written to mark the 100th anniversary of St. John Paul's birth May 18, 1920.

Much of the book is biographical information about the late pope, but each chapter includes Pope Francis' response to questions from Father Epicoco about his relationship with the late pope and observations about St. John Paul's spirituality, personality, events in his life and his teaching. 

I don't find any information about an English translation at the US website of Pauline Books & Media.

Pope Francis will also celebrate a Mass on May 17, 2020 at St. Peter's Basilica in celebration of Karol Wojtyla's birth and there's a national pilgrimage from Poland to Rome to attend. It's being celebrated on Sunday, May 17, the day before his birthday, so that more will attend. And it can't be just a coincidence that the Polish Bishops asked Pope Francis last year to declare Pope St. John Paul II a Doctor of the Church and a Patron of Europe.

More on these two saints and their anniversaries on Monday!

Background to Our Ozark Advent Adventure

My latest blog post at the National Catholic Register is about our attendance at two Masses on the First Sunday of Advent at St. Peter the Fisherman in Mountain Home, Arkansas, and it concludes:

Continuing the theme of paying attention, we drove back to our cabin again on the winding roads in darkness and pouring rain. As we navigated the twisting road, reminded by signs to slow down, watch out for deer, and be prepared for falling rock, we reflected upon the two Masses we’d attended and the glimpse of a parish community we’d experienced on the First Sunday of Advent in the Ozarks. We’d seen the universality of the Church with priests from Poland and Nigeria and Dominican Sisters from a congregation founded in Poland, the ageless celebration of the Mass in both forms of the Latin liturgy, and the welcome to the stranger that a parish community is prepared to give, knowing that visitors are sure to come to Sunday Mass.

We found out more about the two priests who celebrated Mass at St. Peter the Fisherman from the diocesan newspaper, the Arkansas Catholic.

Father Stanislas Swiderski was indeed born in Poland and he was a student of Pope St. John Paul II! Like Karol Wojtyla, he lived under the oppression of the Soviets:

Father Swiderski entered the seminary in 1956 and was ordained Oct. 11, 1963, just four days past his 24th birthday. He settled into the daily routine of ministering to the faithful and while he didn’t suffer direct persecution as a priest, things like traffic restrictions reminded him of the religious choke chain the Soviets held on the Poles.

Still, one of his earliest lessons was that official ideology and actual practice were often very different things.

“There were a number of high-ranking Communist officials, we called them radishes,” he said. “They were red on the outside and white on the inside. We would have parish missions or Lenten retreats, and there would be hours and hours of confessions. The leaders would usually come at night to make theirs so people didn’t know what they were doing. We called them Nicodemuses because of how he came to see Jesus at night.”

As much as he drew strength for his vocation from the devout, Father Swiderski also took note of those who received sacraments under cover of darkness. Rather than condemn them as hypocrites, he took hope from their example.

Re: his study with the future pontiff and saint, he said:

A landmark moment in his priesthood occurred in the late 1960s when Father Swiderski had the opportunity to study under Cardinal Karol Wojtyla at the Catholic University of Lublin. He remembers students flocking to the man who would become Blessed Pope John Paul II (the article was written before his canonization), as approachable and kind as he was brilliant in the classroom.

“He was charismatic, but not in an ostentatious sense. It was more the strength of his personality,” he said. “He was an inspiration in showing how much it meant for him to be with people. For me, it re-set my priorities as a priest and from then on my agenda was clear. I was to be available to the people for whatever they needed.”

Please read the rest there.

Father Christopher Okeke had also come to Mountain Home, Arkansas from a country fraught with political unrest, Nigeria:

Born in 1954, Father Okeke grew up the second of three sons in Amanze Obowo in the Imo state of Nigeria. He was 5 years old when his father died and eight years later, during the civil war in Nigeria in 1967, his mother died. Eventually, he and his brothers went to an orphanage, raised by the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy in Avutu.

“The lesson I got from them is what made me who I am today. Because of their way of life my mind went towards becoming a priest,” Father Okeke said. “It was a promise I made to God — if he would keep us alive during the war, I would be a priest.”

It was more than a promise though; almost divine providence, given the story of his names. His mother had three children, while others did not survive. In hopes that he would live, Father Okeke was named Anabochi, meaning, “If I stay ‘til tomorrow, I will be her child,” he said.

“The name I answered during my baptism was Christopher. Then the bishop said, ‘Do you know what Christopher means? Carrying Christ over the sea.’ That’s why when you look at St. Christopher you see Christ on his shoulder and he will be looking at him,” as the patron saint of travelers, Father Okeke said. “So my bishop connected my first name and my second christened name — ‘If I stay ‘til tomorrow that I would take Christ to people.’” 

I also found out more about one of the sisters from the Polish Dominican order, Sister Joachim Celinska, OP:

Growing up in Poland under Communist rule with two sisters and two brothers, her parents were members of the national underground and raised their children in the Catholic faith.

As a teenager, Sister Joachim loved Pope John Paul II and prayed his vocation prayer daily for an increase in vocations.

"I prayed every night, not realizing that Jesus had a plan for me," Sister Joachim said. . . .

"I was sitting in an empty church and had a very strong feeling. I was to give up everything I have and follow Jesus. And I did," she said. "I'm happy and would never choose another way."

She entered the Dominican Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in 1987, two years before communism fell in Poland.

I had no idea that there would be a Polish community in Mountain Home, Arkansas: it would not have entered my mind that a priest and two sisters would come from Poland to serve such a community! I've always attended rather non-ethnic or nationalist parish churches, although we do have some parishes with European backgrounds, Czech and German mostly, and of course the Vietnamese and Hispanic communities are strong here, but otherwise my experience of parish life has been rather generic. Wichita may be the larger city, but the Mountain Home community may be more cosmopolitan in some ways.

Sister Joachim concluded her interview with a wonderful statement:

"America is a beautiful country. God really loves this country because he's given freedom. We know what it's like to live under oppression. I wish and pray for all American people to take advantage of that freedom and thank God for freedom of religion, so they can express their faith freely."

The Pratulin Martyrs

A facebook friend, Father Dennis Brown, posted about the Pratulin martyrs who suffered during the reign of Tsar Nicholas I yesterday. I had never heard for them so I looked up their story and then found this homily preached by St. John Paul II during a pastoral visit to Poland in 1999. On this last day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which is also the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, I'm sharing portions of that homily:

At this moment, memories stir in me of earlier meetings with the Church of Siedlce, especially the commemoration of the millennium of the Baptism of Poland in 1996, and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Diocese, at which I was able to celebrate the Eucharist at Koden of the Sapieha, at the feet of Our Lady Queen of Podlasia. I joyfully come among you today and give thanks to Divine Providence that I have been given the chance to venerate the relics of the Martyrs of Podlasia. In them, the words of Saint Paul which we heard in today’s liturgy were fulfilled in a special way: “neither death, nor life...nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39).

2. “Holy Father, keep them in your name, those whom you have given me, that they may be one as we are one” (Jn 17:11).

Christ spoke these words on the day before his Passion and Death. In a certain sense, they are his last will and testament. For two thousand years, the Church has moved through history with this testament, with this prayer for unity. Yet there are times in history when this prayer has a special relevance, and we are living in one of those times now. The first millennium of the Church’s history was marked essentially by unity, but from the beginning of the second millennium there have been divisions, first in the East and then later in the West. For almost ten centuries, Christianity has been divided.

This reality has marked and continues to mark the Church which for a thousand years has carried out its mission on Polish soil. In the time of the First Republic, the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian regions were a place where Eastern and Western traditions lived side by side. Slowly, however, there emerged the effects of the division which, as is well known, split Rome and Byzantium in the middle of the eleventh century. Yet gradually the understanding of the need to rebuild unity matured, especially after the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century. The year 1596 saw the historic event known as the Union of Brest. From that time, in the territories of the First Republic, and especially in the Eastern territories, the number of Dioceses and parishes of the Greek-Catholic Church increased. Although preserving the Eastern tradition in the liturgy, in discipline and in language, these Christians remained in union with the Apostolic See.

The Diocese of Siedlce, where we are today, and especially the area of Pratulin, is the place that bears particular witness to that historic process. It was here the confessors of Christ belonging to the Greek-Catholic Church, Blessed Wincenty Lewoniuk and his twelve companions, were martyred.

Three years ago, at their Beatification in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome, I said that “they witnessed to an unshakeable fidelity to the Lord of the vineyard. They did not disappoint him, but staying united to Christ as branches to the vine they brought forth the desired fruits of conversion and holiness. They persevered, even at the cost of the supreme sacrifice. As faithful 'servants' of the Lord, trusting in his grace, they bore witness to their membership of the Catholic Church in fidelity to their Eastern tradition. With a gesture so generous, the martyrs of Pratulin defended not only the holy place of worship in front of which they were slaughtered but also the Church of Christ entrusted to the Apostle Peter, of which they felt themselves to be living stones” (6 October 1996).

The Martyrs of Pratulin defended the Church, which is the vineyard of the Lord. They remained faithful to the Church to the very end and they did not yield to the pressures of the world of their time, which for that precise reason hated them. In their life and in their death, Christ’s request in the Priestly Prayer has been fulfilled: “I have given them your word; and the world has hated them . . . I do not pray that you take them from the world, but that you keep them from the evil one . . . Consecrate them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth” (Jn 17:14-15, 17-19). They bore witness to their fidelity to Christ in his holy Church. In the world in which they lived they sought courageously to defeat, by means of truth and goodness, the evil that was spreading ever more widely, and lovingly they strove to calm the hatred that was raging. Like Christ, who offered himself in sacrifice for them, to consecrate them in the truth – so did they offer their lives for the sake of faithfulness to Christ’s truth and defence of the Church’s unity. These simple people, fathers of families, chose at the critical moment to suffer death rather than yield to pressure in a way untrue to their conscience. “How sweet it is to die for the faith” – these were their last words.

We thank them for their witness which should become the heritage of the entire Church in Poland for the third millennium which is now so near. They made their great contribution to the building of unity. Through the generous sacrifice of their lives, they kept full faith with the cry of Jesus to his Father: “keep them in your name, those whom you have given me, that they may be one as we are one”. By their death they confirmed the commitment to Christ of the Catholic Church of Eastern tradition. The same spirit sustained the countless faithful of the Byzantine-Ukrainian Rite, Bishops, priests and lay people, who during forty-five years of persecution remained faithful to Christ, preserving their identity as a Church. In this witness, fidelity to Christ is interwoven with fidelity to the Church and becomes a service of unity.

Read the rest here. Recounting these details of past atrocities is almost like a process of truth and reconciliation--we have to face the past, repent or apologize for it, and forgive one another. 

Father Robert Abercromby, Anne of Denmark's Catholic Chaplain

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913, Father Robert Abercromby was:

A Jesuit missionary in Scotland in the time of the persecutions, born 1532; died at Braunsberg, in Prussia, 27 April, 1613. He was brought into prominence chiefly by the fact that he converted the Queen of James I of England, when that monarch was as yet James VI of Scotland. The Queen was Anne of Denmark, and her father, an ardent Lutheran, has stipulated that she should have the right to practice her own religion in Scotland, and for that purpose sent with her a chaplain named John Lering who, however, shortly after his arrival, became a Calvinist. The Queen, who abhorred Calvinism, asked some of the Catholic nobles for advice, and it was suggested to call Father Abercromby, who, with some other Jesuits, was secretly working among the Scotch Catholics and winning many illustrious converts to the Church. Though brought up a Lutheran, Queen Anne had in her youth lived with a niece of the Emperor Charles V, and not only knew something of the Faith, but had frequently been present at Mass with her former friend. Abercromby was introduced into the palace, instructed the Queen in the Catholic religion, and received her into the Church. This was about the year 1600. As to the date there is some controversy. Andrew Lang, who merely quotes MacQuhirrie as to the fact of the conversion, without mentioning Abercromby, puts it as occurring in 1598. Intelligence of it at last came to the ears of the King, who, instead of being angry, warned her to keep it secret, as her conversion might imperil his crown. He even went as far as to appoint Abercromby Superintendent of the Royal Falconry, in order that he might remain near the Queen. Up to the time that James succeeded to the crown of England, Father Abercromby remained at the Scottish Court, celebrating Mass in secret, and giving Holy Communion nine or ten times to his neophyte. When the King and Queen were crowned sovereigns of Great Britain, Anne gave proof of her sincerity by absolutely refusing to receive the Protestant sacrament, declaring that she preferred to forfeit her crown rather than take part in what she considered a sacrilegious profanation. Of this, Lang, in his "History of Scotland", says nothing. She made several ineffectual attempts to convert the King. Abercromby remained in Scotland for some time, but as a price of 10,000 crowns was put upon his head he came to England, only to find that the King's kindly dispositions toward him had undergone a change. The alleged discovery of a Gunpowder Plot in 1605, and the attempts made to implicate the Jesuits in the conspiracy had excited in the mind of the King feelings of bitter hostility to the Society. He ordered a strict search to be made for Abercromby, who consequently left the country and betook himself to Braunsberg, in Eastern Prussia, where he died, in his eighty-first year.

Abercromby was born in Scotland, studied in Rome, and served in Poland:

He was born and educated in Scotland, and studied in the Collegium Romanum in Rome, where on 19 August 1563 he became a Jesuit. From 1564 he lived in Braunsberg (then in Royal Prussia), now Braniewo in Poland) where he was professor of grammar in the biggest Polish Jesuit collegium and a novice master. In 1565 he was ordained a priest. In Braniewo he was in constant contact with Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius. He was considered a good priest, but learning Polish was difficult for him, and he had some problems with the finances of the school. Due to these problems he was permitted to leave Poland in 1580, when he met the Scottish king for the first time. In September 1580 he went back to Poland - from 1580 to 1587 he performed similar tasks in Kraków, Poznań and Wilno. In 1587 he left Poland and went back to Scotland. During the journey to Scotland in 1580 and during his second stay there he was organizing transports of Scottish youths to be trained in Polish schools.