Kazimierz ÅšwiÄ…tek

Kazimierz Cardinal Świątek ( born October 21, 1914 in Walk, Livonia, † July 21, 2011 in Pinsk ) was Roman Catholic Archbishop of Minsk - Mogilev in Belarus.

Life

Kazimierz Świątek was born in Walk, in the Imperial Russian province of Livonia, and grew up in Riga. His father, head of a patriotic Polish family, fought for the Polish Legions of Józef Piłsudski and fell in Vilnius in combat. His mother and his younger brother were deported to Siberia and were able to return to Poland in 1922. Kazimierz Świątek occurred in 1932 in the Catholic seminary in Pinsk (then Poland ) and received on April 8, 1939 from the hands of the then Bishop of Pinsk, Kazimierz Bukraba, the ordination. In the time of the suppression of the Catholic Church in the Soviet era Świątek spent a total of several decades in labor camps and prisons. The outbreak of the Second World War prevented 1941 the enforcement of the death penalty; He spent two months in the death cell in Brest. In 1944, the young priest was arrested again and sentenced to ten years in a concentration camp, which he spent in Siberia and the Arctic Circle in Vorkuta. After his release, he celebrated the first Mass in Pinsk until 16 July 1954. In the following years he devoted himself to the restoration of the Cathedral of Pinsk.

After the fall of the Soviet Union ( USSR) and the official readmission of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II Świątek on 13 April 1991 concerning the Archbishop of Minsk - Mogilev and Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Pinsk. On 21 May 1991 the then already 76 -year-old received episcopal consecration by Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the Apostolic Administrator for the Catholics of the Latin Rite in the European part of Russia; Co-consecrators were Władysław Jędruszuk, Bishop of Drohiczyn in Poland, and Edward Kisiel, Bishop of Białystok, Poland.

Shortly after his 80th birthday, on 26 November 1994 Świątek was received by Pope John Paul II as a Cardinal with the priestly title church of San Gerardo Maiella in the College of Cardinals.

His position as chief shepherd of 200,000 Catholics of his archdiocese, Cardinal Świątek practiced beyond the 90th year of life out yet, but was now supported by a suffragan bishop.

Cardinal Świątek was the first president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Belarus.

His resignation was in the 92nd year of his office as diocesan bishop on 13 June 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI. granted. Kazimierz Cardinal Świątek died July 21, 2011 96 -year-old in a hospital in Belarus Pinsk.

Honors

• Price " Fidei Testis " ( Witnesses to Faith ) by the Institute Paul VI. (2004)
• Knight of the Legion of Honor by President Jacques Chirac (2006)