Stefan Wyszynski (3 August 1901-28 May 1981) was the Catholic Primate of Poland from 1948 to 1981.
Biography[]
Stefan Wyszynski was born in Zuzela, Congress Poland, Russian Empire in 1901. He studied at the Roman Catholic University of Lublin, before becoming a teacher at a seminary, where he was noted for his social Catholicism and his progressiveness. During World War II he went underground, and in 1945 was appointed Bishop of Lublin. In 1948, he became Bishop of Warsaw, and in 1953 was made a cardinal. An outspoken critic of government repression, he was arrested and confined to a monastery from 1951 to 1956. Then, he reached an understanding of coexistence with Wladyslaw Gomulka. The Catholic Church subsequently refrained from criticism in matters not of direct concern, and was in return given the freedom to minister to the spiritual needs of its flock. Even though the Church thus became careful not to call for open opposition to the government, its very preseence as a social and cultural force that allowed refuge from the communist machinery became the greatest challenge to the state, which in the 1980s it proved unable to overcome. Wyszynski died in 1981, and he was said to have offered his life in exchange for that of Pope John Paul II, who had been badly wounded in an assassination attempt earlier that month. Wyszynski was posthumously seen as a Polish national hero fro his opposition to both Nazism and communism, and he was venerated by Pope Francis on 18 December 2017.