Warsaw Archbishop Adrian Galbas will introduce the relics of the late Polish primate to the chapel in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, at 11 a.m., the Warsaw Archdiocese said.
At 7 p.m., Galbas will preside over a solemn Mass at Warsaw's St. John's Basilica, where worshippers will pray for Wyszyński’s canonization.
Wyszyński, who died on May 28, 1981, led the Catholic Church in Poland for 33 years as archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw and primate of Poland.
He remains one of the most important figures in the country’s 20th-century history and is often referred to as the "Primate of the Millennium."
Born on August 3, 1901, in Zuzela, eastern Poland, Wyszyński was ordained a priest in Włocławek, north-central Poland, in 1924 and later earned a doctorate in canon law and social sciences at the Catholic University of Lublin.
During World War II, Wyszyński provided religious services for Poland’s underground Home Army. Wanted by the Gestapo, the Nazi German secret police, he found refuge at the Institute for the Blind in Laski near Warsaw. He served as a hospital chaplain during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Germans.
He became a bishop in 1946 and was appointed archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw, as well as primate of Poland, in 1948.
His leadership coincided with the harshest decades of communist rule in Poland. The communist authorities arrested him on September 25, 1953, and held him in internment in several locations until October 1956.
He returned to Warsaw during a period of political thaw.
Wyszyński later led the Great Novena, a nine-year spiritual program preparing for the 1966 millennium of Poland’s baptism. His social teaching emphasized human dignity, the role of the family and the responsibility of the state to serve society.
He also took part in the Second Vatican Council and participated in the 1978 conclave that elected Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II.
Wyszyński died of cancer on May 28, 1981, at the age of 79.
He was beatified in Warsaw on September 12, 2021, together with Mother Elżbieta Róża Czacka, founder of the Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross.
In the Catholic Church, beatification is one step short of being declared a saint.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP