A Polish Patriot or a Hero of Independent Belarus?

Introduction

The subtitle of this article might suggest a certain dilemma. Yet I am deeply convinced that the two designations are in fact complementary. What we know of Father Kazimierz Świątek demonstrates that there is no contradiction in posing the problem in this way. Above all, we know that through his life and his pastoral and social work he managed to reconcile what might appear to be extreme positions. He was a fervent Polish patriot, yet at the same time a man devoted to the idea of an independent Belarusian state. He came from a borderland (kresy) family. Perhaps this is why these seemingly contradictory attitudes and two patriotisms could not — in keeping with the best tradition of the heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania — be mutually exclusive.

My reflections are based both on the testimony of witnesses and his friends, and on written documents — above all on the record of his memoirs from the years 1918–1988, recently published by the Apostolicum publishing house under the title "Melodie drewnianej łyżki" ("Melodies of a Wooden Spoon").

The person and activity of the Cardinal were also very close to me personally. I first had the opportunity to meet him in 1989, in Pinsk. As a tourist, invited by acquaintances, I found myself by chance in the capital of Polesia, a city on the Pina and Pripyat rivers. One of the first places I visited, curious, on a cold March morning, was the Pinsk cathedral. I had earlier read about Father Świątek in the independent press as a borderland priest who had remained among the faithful after the war despite the shifting borders and the inhuman conditions of Soviet reality. In 1988 this heroic priest had appealed to Polish readers to send books in support of the cultural, spiritual and national rebirth of Polesia. It was the time of perestroika, and many such appeals from the East were published in the independent press, although getting help across was still not easy, since a heavily guarded border still separated the Polish People's Republic from the USSR. After the morning Mass I stayed a while longer in the church, and, driven by curiosity, went into the sacristy to speak with the parish priest. I was generously received — not only with breakfast and endless cups of tea, but also with a long, personal account of his fate and the history of the diocese. In this way, already in 1989, I gained knowledge of the life and work of Father Kazimierz Świątek — knowledge that, years later, we can read about in his book, published thanks to the efforts of Professor Elżbieta Smułkowa, the first Polish ambassador to independent Belarus.

I had the opportunity to meet the Cardinal many more times later, as a Polish diplomat. We spoke of the fate of Belarus and of the problems between our two countries when I served as Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Minsk (1998–2002). I was a frequent guest at the cathedral, as well as in various private conversations during those years. The last time I paid him a farewell visit in Pinsk, in 2002, Cardinal Świątek presented me with his impressive achievements: the rebuilt seminary and monastery complex and a functioning theological seminary. I was also invited to give lectures and classes to the seminarians once my mission had ended. That plan, however, was never realized.

A Polish Patriot

Above all, Cardinal Świątek remained, to the end of his days, a Polish patriot. Faithful from childhood to the traditions of the Borderlands, he was raised in a system of values in which, despite an unambiguous national declaration, respect was maintained for people of different views, different faiths and different ethnic affiliations. He gave expression to this throughout virtually his entire life.

Of his ties to the borderland landscape (referring to the areas around Baranowicze, Dukszty, and later Grodno) he writes, among other things, as follows:

This childhood landscape Father Świątek would later record for himself on film, indulging his passion as a naturalist. I know from the Cardinal's own personal accounts that he shot hundreds of metres of film with an amateur movie camera.

Kazimierz Świątek lost his father in early childhood, and it was his mother who took on the upbringing of her two sons, working hard to support them. The future Cardinal owed his religious and patriotic upbringing also to his uncles, aunts and grandmother, of whom he writes a great deal in his memoirs.

It was this uncle — his mother's brother, a lower-ranking railway official — who offered to finance studies in Polish philology at the University of Vilnius for the young secondary-school graduate Kazimierz. Yet the future priest's path was to unfold differently. During a trip to Pinsk organized by the Marian Sodality, Kazimierz made the decision to enter the theological seminary. As he writes and recalls, the inspiration was a spiritual encounter in the cathedral, at the coffin of the great patron of the Pinsk diocese, Bishop Zygmunt Łoziński. It is to him that he owed not only his vocation, but his lifelong bond with the diocese, in which he would serve as priest and bishop.

There is a second, extraordinarily emotional and important episode in his life. During the ceremony of the burial of Marshal Piłsudski's heart at the Rossa cemetery in Vilnius on 12 May 1936, as a seminarian delegated from Pinsk together with a whole group to this religious-patriotic ceremony, he discovers the unknown fate of his father. Among the legionnaires' graves he stumbles by chance upon his father Jan's headstone. Only seventeen years after his death does he learn that, after being released from German internment, his father joined Piłsudski's forces in 1918 and was killed on 20 April 1919 during the Vilnius operation.

Kazimierz Świątek's patriotic disposition was thus shaped within his family and among those closest to him, but it was sealed by the fact that his father — a soldier and legionnaire of the reborn Poland — rests in one of the most important cemeteries of the restored homeland, beside the heart of Marshal Piłsudski.

A Borderland Priest

In his memoirs, Kazimierz Świątek devotes a great deal of space to his seminary formation. He writes of his lecturers, of his fellow students, many of whom would later give their lives for their faith and for their service to the Church. But interestingly, he does not write in a lofty or pathos-laden tone. He touches on ordinary matters, describing rough-edged friendships and conflicts, misunderstandings and intrigues. From this rich account we receive a profound truth about life under those conditions. His entire narrative is full of vivid images in which patriotism, and intellectual and spiritual formation, form an obvious backdrop, without exaltation or attempts to impress the reader. In the same style he would later tell us of prisons, labour camps, the people he encountered, and the Bolshevik regime that, like a steamroller, crushed every manifestation of culture — not only Polish culture, but the culture of Western civilization in general, on whose patterns the generations living in the Borderlands had been formed.

Ordained a priest in April 1939, he was assigned to work in the parish of Prużana. As a young priest, just before the outbreak of war, imbued with a patriotic disposition, he began his activity — not only pastoral, but also social, and even political. He had a rebellious spirit and a critical mind, and for that reason he did not accept everything that was corroding the pre-war Polish state from within. Here is how he writes of these beginnings as a priest and a public figure:

Father Świątek witnessed the collapse of the Polish state, but time and again bore witness to his attachment to the homeland. As he recalls his verbal duels during interrogations in the NKVD prison in Brześć, he provoked fury among the Chekists by insisting that he believed Poland would continue to exist. Awaiting a death sentence in the spring of 1941 in the fortress at Brześć — thanks, as he himself writes, to the intercession of Bishop Łoziński — he lived to see his release. This momentary freedom came as a result of Germany's aggression against the USSR. After leaving prison he devoted himself to pastoral work, while at the same time witnessing the tragedies and dramas of war, including those involving Soviet partisans, Belarusian collaborators, and the two armies occupying the former Borderlands — the Soviet and the German.

During the second Soviet occupation, Father Świątek was again imprisoned. The NKVD recalled his existence. He was first taken to the investigative detention centre in Minsk. There he met a certain Belarusian communist who, in the 1930s, had been sent across into Poland for subversive and intelligence work. Unmasked, he had fallen into the hands of the Polish justice system, and afterwards, having served his sentence, left for the USSR. And here his drama began. From an intelligence agent and Soviet spy he became suspected of working for Polish intelligence. Thus, in a single cell, a Catholic priest and an ideologically committed Belarusian communist — one who had been cured of his faith in Soviet justice and in the sense of Bolshevik ideology — came to meet.

After many months of investigation, Father Świątek was sent, in 1945, to the labour camps for ten years — for alleged collaboration with the German occupier. For the Stalinist regime, the sentence was supposed to be relatively lenient. Father Kazimierz would serve virtually the entire sentence and return to his home diocese from far-off Vorkuta. He did not seek repatriation, or a better fate; he remained among his faithful — a small remnant of Poles and a growing number of Belarusian Catholics, for whom the Roman Catholic Church proved the only lasting haven amid the shifting geopolitical realities.

An Activist of National Rebirth

As a Polish priest and patriot, Kazimierz Świątek became involved, during the period of perestroika, in social activity aimed at national rebirth and democratic transformation in Soviet Belarus. According to the account of Tadeusz Gawin, on 15 June 1990 Father Świątek, together with other Poles in Belarus, welcomed at the border crossing in Brześć the Marshal of the Polish Senate, Andrzej Stelmachowski, and the accompanying Bishop Zygmunt Kamiński. The following day, the founding congress of the Union of Poles in Belarus took place in Grodno. (Gawin, 2003, pp. 134–135)

It is worth noting that at the founding congress of the Union of Poles, the official guest on behalf of the Belarusian authorities, Chairman of the Supreme Council of the BSSR Stanisław Szuszkiewicz, addressed the gathering in Polish. And during the election of the statutory authorities, Tadeusz Gawin publicly proposed that the prelate, Father Kazimierz Świątek, become vice-president of the Union of Poles in Belarus. The priest is said to have replied, and I quote:

For the organization's activists this meant, at the time, that the Catholic Church would support the Polish national rebirth. Meanwhile, Father Kazimierz would become entirely absorbed in organizational work on behalf of the reviving structures of the Church in Belarus. For this reason, after a few months, he resigned from active involvement in the Union of Poles in Belarus. On 21 May 1991, the consecration of Archbishop Kazimierz Świątek took place in the Pinsk cathedral. As the then-president of the Union of Poles in Belarus, Tadeusz Gawin, recalls, after the ceremony the Archbishop submitted, into his hands, his formal resignation from the post of vice-president of the Polish organization (Gawin, 2003, p. 183).

From that time on he would devote himself to a far more important mission, becoming one of the builders of the Roman Catholic Church in Belarus. And after Bishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz moved, in the spring of 1991, to pastoral work in Russia, Father Kazimierz took on the role of chief coordinator of the work of the emerging Belarusian episcopate. It is worth remembering that, at this time, Kazimierz Świątek was already nearly 77 years old.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Belarusian Church was rebuilt from ruin and ashes. Several decades of embattled communism had led to the degradation of religious communities and the destruction of sacred infrastructure (historic, and often architecturally significant, churches, chapels and cemeteries). To this was added a transformation of social consciousness, years of atheization and de-nationalization. In 1988, recalling his own highly significant experience of many years of pastoral practice under an atheistic political system, Father Świątek wrote:

I once had the opportunity to hold a long conversation with Cardinal Świątek on the subject of language policy in the Church in Belarus. He admitted then, with some regret, that he heard various voices of criticism, especially from Poland, accusing him of introducing the Belarusian language instead of holding exclusively to Polish in the liturgy and in pastoral work. He would answer that he could not substitute for the Polish state, which has its own institutions and appropriate tools for the promotion and teaching of the Polish language. He was a citizen of Belarus and a priest of the Universal Church, whose principal mission is the proclamation of the Gospel, not language education. Father Świątek recalled that when Cardinal Glemp first visited Belarusian parishes in September 1988, he had the opportunity to see for himself that the hunger for truth, and pastoral needs, demand flexibility of us as priests. Whereas Polish priests had, in the early 1990s, provided very substantial help in rebuilding the Church's structures, afterwards the time came for young priests drawn from among the citizens of Belarus. In the seminaries in Grodno, and later in Pinsk, there appeared dozens, then hundreds, of candidates for the priesthood for whom Polish was a second, or even a third, language. They had been raised, in their homes and their own milieus, speaking Russian and Belarusian. And it was they who began to shape the new face of the reborn Church in the former Soviet republic, and later in the independent Belarusian state.

Cardinal of a Reborn Belarus

After assuming the post of Archbishop of Minsk-Mohilev and administrator of the Pinsk diocese, Father Kazimierz Świątek would head the entire Church as cardinal (his nomination came in November 1994), although he would formally assume the office of Chairman of the Conference of Bishops only in February 1999, once the body of bishops had grown larger. The first decree concerning the establishment of the Metropolitan Commission for the Translation of Liturgical Texts and Religious Literature into Belarusian was issued in July 1992 (reference no. L.dz. 07/92); subsequently, following a resolution of the Council of Priests in April 1994, the Commission's membership was expanded to ten persons. Among them were bishops, priests, members of religious orders, and four lay persons, including editors of the Catholic press (see the decree of 5 May 1995, L.Dz. 8a/95). It is worth noting, incidentally, that it is thanks to them (chiefly Krystyna Lalko and Alina Nowikowa) that we have a record, in publications and in press materials, of just how difficult and protracted this process was. In the documents of the episcopate we find information on the ongoing process of translating, and subsequently introducing into official use, the liturgical texts.

Following the session of the 16th Conference of Bishops, in March 2003 a document was published approving the translation of the missal "Missale Romanum. Editio typica III" (see: catholic.by, decree no. 4110). In August 2004, meanwhile, Cardinal Kazimierz Świątek — as a result of the commission's work — received the completed Roman missal in the Belarusian language, blessed in a special message by Pope John Paul II. This fact points to the long and painstaking process by which liturgical texts entered the life of the Belarusian Church. It is without doubt the fruit of Cardinal Świątek's gradual arrival, over many years, at the decision to Belarusianize the Roman Catholic Church in the Belarusian dioceses (see: media.catholic.by/ave/, no. 3/94, 2003).

Cardinal Świątek's pro-Belarusian policy was not guided by political doctrines, nor was he under the influence of this or that ideology. He was very often guided by prudence and caution. In the early 1990s, the Belarusian authorities were particularly oversensitive and suspicious toward neighbouring Poland, and accusations of Polonization through the Catholic Church repeatedly surfaced as a result.

Accusations were also directed at the Cardinal that there was no proper order in the documentation. But one must bear in mind just how modest the human resources at the disposal of the Belarusian episcopate were in the 1990s. Most matters of an official nature had to be handled personally by the Cardinal, supported by a handful of secretaries and assistants who were themselves burdened with many other duties. For example, Mrs Lalko and Mrs Nowikowa would, for many years, run numerous periodicals, both in print and electronic form (Ave Maria, Nasza Wiara, Słowo Życia, Odkupiciel, Wiadomości Katolickie, as well as the Catholic publishing house Pro Christo).

According to official data derived from the censuses conducted since 1989, we know that no more than around 300,000 people of Polish nationality live in Belarus. One may presume that a similar number again feel a connection to Polishness, or have Polish roots. But many of them do not command the Polish language even at a basic level. On the other hand, if one looks at the statistics of the Catholic Church in Belarus, the figure most often cited is 1.5 million faithful. Even so, critical voices alleging a deliberate depolonization of Catholic believers have not been lacking. This is how the great expert on the Church in the USSR, the Rev. Prof. Roman Dzwonkowski, wrote in the 1990s:

It must be granted that, although the remarks of the Rev. Prof. Dzwonkowski are critical in character, his texts are not lacking in understanding for the complexity of the problem. Among Polish researchers, conflicts concerning the language of services in the churches in Belarus were noted, and the Rev. Prof. Dzwonkowski repeatedly expressed critical views on the subject of the depolonization of the faithful of Polish origin among Catholics. He had a sensitivity to the delicacy and the complexity of these processes.

Looking at matters from Cardinal Świątek's perspective, it should be noted that the process of Belarusianizing the liturgy was a long-drawn-out process, carried out with sensitivity to the needs of the faithful and to the customs of the parishes — perhaps with the exception of a few places mentioned by the Rev. Prof. Dzwonkowski (this concerns the parish of Wiszniewo in the Minsk-Mohilev diocese, and a dozen or so incidents in the Grodno diocese; it must be granted, taking into account the period observed, spanning more than a decade, that these were not frequent or drastic occurrences).

The problem of the depolonization of the Catholic Church in Belarus appears relatively rarely within Belarusian intellectual space; more material on the subject was published in Polish-language periodicals in Belarus. Many in-depth analyses have been published in Polish, but since they do not so directly concern identity disputes within Belarus itself, it suffices merely to signal the most important of them — namely the works of Father Professor Roman Dzwonkowski, Adam Hlebowicz, Piotr Rudkouski, and — somewhat apart from purely ecclesiastical matters — the works of Professor Elżbieta Smułkowa and Anna Engelking. Among Belarusian works directly concerning the history of the Catholic Church in Belarus, particular attention is due to the martyrology of Catholics in Belarus for the years 1917–1964, prepared by Leonid Marakov and published with the support of Bishop Anton Dziemianko (Marakau, 2009).

To sum up, the main causes of depolonization may be grouped under three headings:

1.     a conscious, if unpopular, decision on the part of the bishops (in particular the pro-state and/or pro-Roman policy of Cardinal Kazimierz Świątek);

2.     grassroots pressure (from the faithful, and from young Belarusian clergy demanding guarantees for the preservation of the Belarusian and/or Russian language in the seminaries and in pastoral work), combined with the passivity of a large proportion of parishioners in the face of changes to the hours of services held in Polish;

3.     pressure from the state administration (the expulsion of priests and nuns who were citizens of the Republic of Poland) and demands to diminish the role and weight of the Polish language in the life of the Church (the press, the media, services, catechesis, and so on).

The process of the Church's depolonization was the subject of sharp criticism in the 1990s. From today's perspective (the year 2025), it is clearer that the attempts, at the time, by certain Polish activists to call on the Church to conduct obligatory catechesis and liturgy in Polish (publications by Tadeusz Kruczkowski, Tadeusz Malewicz, Eugeniusz Skrobodzki) may have been an attempt to reinforce antagonisms. Criticism in this area — directed at the Catholic hierarchs in Belarus — appears today misplaced and counterproductive, particularly in view of the difficulties experienced today by Belarusian society, and the re-Sovietization and repression to which the clergy are being subjected.

It can therefore be stated that Cardinal Świątek rightly assessed and treated interventions and appeals of this kind as provocative and confrontational, most often replying to those concerned that the decision on the language used in church belonged to the parish communities themselves.

In the years 2001–2005, the Belarusian episcopate undertook numerous administrative and ecclesiastical initiatives (not without pressure from the Belarusian authorities) that broadened the presence of the Russian and Belarusian languages in the life of parish communities and of entire dioceses. Clergy were placed under an obligation to organize the liturgy also in Russian and/or Belarusian (independently of Polish), even where the number of the faithful for that language group was small. In the Grodno diocese, as I have mentioned, this provoked numerous protests and expressions of discontent, although these never took drastic forms going beyond internal ecclesiastical discussion.

The Belarusian authorities were well aware that, at the same time, a natural process of generational replacement was under way, with Polish clergy (most of them holding Polish citizenship) being systematically supplanted by young clergy who were citizens of the Republic of Belarus. From the late 1990s, the regional Committees for Religious Affairs, on instructions from the authorities in Minsk, undertook numerous initiatives to ensure that parishes, church offices and more important positions were held by citizens of Belarus. This process indirectly contributed to the "Belarusianization" of the Catholic Church. It must be acknowledged, however, that the sensitivity and diplomatic skill of the Belarusian bishops — Kazimierz Świątek, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, Aleksander Kaszkiewicz, Anton Dziemianko, Kazimierz Wielosielec and Vladislav Blin — contributed to the smooth and quiet regulation of difficult matters along the Church–state line.

Conclusion

The most important conclusion to emerge from an analysis of the pastoral and social activity of Cardinal Kazimierz Świątek is — aside from an assessment of the heroism of his stance as a priest and a Christian — his evident prudence and strategic thinking.

In February 2003, that is, toward the end of his pastoral ministry, Cardinal Świątek, as head of the Belarusian Church, presented Pope John Paul II, during a meeting, with an impressive set of statistics. From a Church almost entirely destroyed and marginalized, with a small number of faithful, at the end of the 1980s, it had transformed into a large and socially active community of believers. The state of affairs at the end of December 2001 was as follows: approximately 1.2 million faithful, more than 400 parishes, 360 priests — of whom nearly half were clergy drawn from among the citizens of independent Belarus, already trained in the seminaries of Grodno and Pinsk — 350 members of religious orders and 150 seminarians. By contrast, in 1989 the Belarusian Church had at its disposal fewer than 30 priests and members of religious orders, with a handful of seminarians training in the seminaries of Kaunas and Riga, and fewer than 100 parishes. When we take into account that, in 2025, the number of the faithful exceeds 1.5 million, the number of parishes is over 600, and the number of priests nearly 500, we can see just how dynamic this process has been (cf. media.catholic.by/ave/, no. 4(95), 2003).

Thanks to Cardinal Świątek's work, the Catholic Church in Belarus regained its own distinct character, and with it an autonomous place in the history of the state, as a community of faith and tradition rather than a community of a single national group (a minority).

Over the past five years, in connection with socio-political tension and then the war with Ukraine, the internal situation has undergone a radical reversal. Repression has not spared the Catholic Church either. Mention must be made of the numerous clergy who have come into conflict with the post-Soviet regime in Belarus. The head of the Church — Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz — was forced to relinquish his functions, being pushed into enforced retirement. Many priests holding Polish citizenship have been removed from their parishes and/or ordered to leave the country. Several priests have been arrested and sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. The best known is the case of Father Henryk Okołotowicz, accused of espionage on behalf of Poland and the Vatican.

Nevertheless, the situation of the Church remains far removed from that in which Catholics found themselves during Father Kazimierz Świątek's pastoral work in the USSR. Foresight, and the ability to work with the faithful, have borne their fruit.

Sources and Studies

Materials and Documents

Decrees of the Archbishop of the Minsk-Mohilev Archdiocese

www.catholic.by

https://media.catholic.by/ave/

https://ave-maria.by/magazine/issues/15

Periodicals

Ave Maria

Głos znad Niemna

Magazyn Polski

Nasza Wiara

Memoirs, Autobiographies

Gawin T., Zwycięstwa i porażki. Odrodzenie polskości na Białorusi w latach 1987–2000, Białystok, 2003.

Świątek K., Melodie drewnianej łyżki. Moje wspomnienia, Apostolicum, Ząbki, 2022.

Books and Monographs

Dzwonkowski R., Odrodzenie Kościoła Katolickiego obrządku łacińskiego w ZSRR, in: Polacy w Kościele Katolickim w ZSRR, ed. Rev. E. Walewander, Lublin, 1991, pp. 213–257.

Dzwonkowski R., Gorbaniuk J., Gorbaniuk O., Postawy katolików wobec zmian językowych w Kościele katolickim na Białorusi, Kraków, 2006.

Gawin T., Związek Polaków na Białorusi. Historia niszczenia niezależności, Warsaw–Białystok, 2006.

Gawin T., O bycie Polakiem. Polacy w Białoruskiej Socjalistycznej Republice Sowieckiej 1944–1991, Grodno–Białystok, 2013.

Hlebowicz A., Kościół w niewoli. Kościół katolicki na Białorusi i Ukrainie po II wojnie światowej, Warsaw, 1991.

Marakau L., Represawanyje katalickija duchounyja kansekrawanyja i swieckija asoby Biełarusi 1917–1964, Minsk, 2009.

Rudkouski P., Powstawanie Białorusi, Wrocław, 2009.

Rudkouski P., Białoruskie pytania w kontekście europejskiej odpowiedzi, Wrocław, 2017.

Smułkowa E., Engelking A. (eds.), Język i tożsamość na pograniczu kultur, Białystok, 2000.

Smułkowa E., Białoruś i pogranicza: studia o języku i społeczeństwie, Warsaw, 2002.

Smułkowa E., Engelking A. (eds.), Pogranicza Białorusi, w perspektywie interdyscyplinarnej, Warsaw, 2007.

Articles and Other Studies

Dzwonkowski R., Od kościoła polskiego do kościoła Polaków na wschodzie?, in: Sympozjum 1(4), 1999.

Dzwonkowski R., Polacy w kościele katolickim obrządku łacińskiego na Białorusi w latach 1988–2009, in: Polska mniejszość narodowa na Białorusi 1988–2009. Ocena minionego dwudziestolecia, eds. J. Winnicki, T. Gawin, Białystok, 2009.

Malewicz T., O języku w kościele, in: Polska mniejszość narodowa na Białorusi. Związek Polaków na Białorusi w 20-lecie działalności, eds. Z.J. Winnicki, T. Gawin, Białystok, 2010, pp. 185–190.