Michał Kozal

Michał Kozal (born September 25, 1893 in Nowy Folwark , Poland , † January 26, 1943 in Dachau ) was a Polish bishop and martyr . He was beatified on June 14, 1987. His feast day is January 26th, in Poland also June 14th.

Life

The son of Johann Kozal and Marianna, née Płaczków, Polish farmers who worked on the manor of a Prussian junker, attended elementary school in Kobiernie and then the grammar school in Krotoszyn . In 1914 he entered the seminary of the Archdiocese of Poznan . From 1917 he studied further in the seminary in Gniezno . He was ordained a priest there on February 23, 1918 . Until 1922 he was employed as a chaplain in various parishes. On September 29, 1922 he was appointed prefect of the Catholic humanistic girls' high school in Bromberg / Bydgoszcz . In addition to the management, he also taught as a religion teacher. In 1927 Archbishop August Hlond appointed him in 1927 as a spiritual director at the seminary in Gniezno, from 1929 to 1939 he was also rector there. In 1933 Pope Pius XI appointed him . to the papal chamberlain (secret chamberlain).

On June 10, 1939, Pope Pius XII appointed him . to auxiliary bishop in Włocławek and titular bishop of Lappa . He received his episcopal ordination on August 13, 1939 in the Cathedral of Włocławek . He became Vicar General of the Bishop of Włocławek Karol Mieczysław Radoński and - after he was forced to leave the country by the Nazi occupation forces in September 1939 - diocesan administrator of the diocese of Włocławek.

martyrdom

Devotional image of the Blessed

After the invasion of German troops in Poland on September 1, 1939, he refused to flee and was the people of his diocese in this situation by forces in. He protested and intervened in vain against the anti-church measures of the occupiers. On November 7, 1939, he was arrested by the Gestapo along with many priests from his diocese and the entire seminary with all seminarians and professors , and after almost 10 weeks of interrogation and torture, he was interned in a Salesian monastery in the Warthegau . On April 3, 1941, he was deported via Berlin to the Dachau concentration camp , where he arrived on April 25.

As a prisoner in the pastor's block, he tried to help the priests who were also prisoners , as a pastor and by giving away his own meager meals. He suffered greatly from the religious hatred of the SS , who tortured and beat him, and from the torture of some of his fellow inmates. The inmate with the number 25544 was repeatedly tortured , beaten and ill-treated . Even so, he always remained calm and blessed and prayed for all fellow prisoners and even his enemies. In January 1943 he was admitted to the camp infirmary due to hunger and exhaustion due to a painful otitis media and was murdered there with lethal injection on January 26, 1943 when it became known that he was a Catholic bishop. The camp doctor's death certificate stated: died of typhus . The inmates asked to bury the body in the Dachau cemetery, but the camp commandant had it cremated in the camp's crematorium on January 30th under pressure from Berlin . His ashes were scattered in the adjacent rivers to prevent any veneration of a martyr's grave. The family's request to hand over the urn and the bishop's personal belongings were denied. The inmates and witnesses of Bishop Kozal's martyrdom asked for canonization to begin as early as 1946, but did not succeed until 1957. On January 14, 1987, on his third trip to Poland, Pope John Paul II beatified the martyr bishop Michał Kozal in Warsaw .

He is patron of the Polish dioceses of Bydgoszcz and Wloclawek, patron of the city of Wloclawek and patron of many churches in Poland.

Web links

Commons : Michał Kozal  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry on Michał Kozal on catholic-hierarchy.org
• Michaël Kozal (Patron Saint Index)
• Portrait of the Blessed (Polish)
• Website about the blessed from the Dachau concentration camp