Jozef Glemp (18 December 1929-23 January 2013) was a Polish Cardinal of the Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Warsaw from 25 September 1981 to 6 December 2006, succeeding Stefan Wyszynski and preceding Stanislaw Wielgus.
Biography[]
Jozef Glemp was born in Inowroclaw, Poland in 1929, and he was ordained a priest in 1956 before obtaining a doctorate in civil and canon law at the Lateran and Gregorian Universities in Rome. He became Stefan Wyszynski's secretary in 1967, and was appointed Bishop of Warmia in 1979. He succeeded Wyszynski in 1981, and subsequently tried to mediate between Solidarity and Wojciech Jaruzelski, and so inadvertently acquired a greater political role for himself and the Catholic Church. After the fall of communism, his role became more negative, as he tried desperately to halt the growing secularization of society, apparent in the liberalization of abortion legislation. He died in Warsaw in 2013.