Karol Milik

Tomb for Karol Milik in the Wroclaw Cathedral

Karol Milik (born June 14, 1892 in Rennersdorf ( Renardowice ) near Czechowitz-Dzieditz in Austria-Hungary ; † May 10, 1976 in Landsberg an der Warthe , People's Republic of Poland ) was a Polish clergyman and the first Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Breslau after the Second world war .

Career

Karol Milik attended the Polish grammar school in Teschen and then studied at the Philosophical-Theological College of the seminary in Weidenau , which was in the former Austrian part of the diocese of Wroclaw. In 1915 he was ordained a priest by the Breslau prince-bishop Adolf Bertram and worked as a military chaplain during the First World War . Then he was director of the People's Libraries in Poland . During the Second World War he went into hiding in Warsaw and shortly after the end of the war took over the rectorate of St. Johannes Kantius Church in Poznan .

Although after the death of Cardinal Bertram on July 16, 1945, the Breslau cathedral chapter replaced the previous cathedral dean Dr. Ferdinand Piontek had elected Chapter Vicar , Karol Milik was elected on August 15, 1945 by the Polish primate , Cardinal August Hlond , who divided the diocesan area of ​​Wroclaw east of the Oder-Neisse line into three administrative units (Breslau, Oppeln and Landsberg an der Warthe ) had divided, appointed Apostolic Administrator of Breslau, although Hlond had no papal authorization to do so.

The official assumption of office by Karol Milik took place on September 1, 1945 under very difficult conditions. Piontek was able to stay until the end of 1946. Milik initiated the establishment of a Polish diocesan administration and ecclesiastical organizational structures, while a new German ordinariate was established in Görlitz from October 1945 for the part of the Archdiocese of Breslau in the Soviet zone . Milik took care of the reconstruction of the Wroclaw Cathedral , which was accessible to the faithful again in 1950. After a tough effort, Milik managed to get Meissen's Bishop Petrus Legge on January 24, 1948, transferring the jurisdiction of the Meissen diocesan area east of the Neisse.

On January 26, 1951, the administrators in the former German dioceses were forbidden from further administration by the communist rulers. They were recalled from the administered office and were banned from staying in their previous residences. In their place, so-called capitular vicars were appointed by the People's Republic of Poland . Milik had to leave Wroclaw and was temporarily interned.

literature

• Józef Pater: The resettlement of Lower Silesia in the context of the re-establishment of the diocese of Breslau from 1945 to 1951 . In: Matthias Theodor Vogt (ed.): Cultures in encounter . Collegium Pontes, Wrocław and Görlitz 2004, ISBN 83-7432-018-4 , pp. 87-92.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jerzy Pietrzak, Działalność kard. Augusta Hlonda jako wysłannika papieskiego na Ziemiach Odzyskanych w 1945 r. ( Memento of July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), section 'Objęcie Rządów'.

predecessor	Office	successor
Ferdinand Piontek	Administrator of the Archdiocese of Wroclaw, Wroclaw District 1946–1951	Kazimierz Lagosz