Author(s): Józef Szymański / Language(s): Polish
Issue: 39/2018
In the interwar period, both the Church and the Polish authorities sought to provide native religious care for a multi-million group of Poles in exile, which was a great area for cooperation. Their motivation was of a diverse nature: from purely pragmatic and political at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – embassies, consulates, to religious and humanitarian at the level of local Polish priests, who had to deal with a group of people scattered and abandoned in terms of consular and religious care.For the easier administration of the pastoral ministry, the Rector of the Polish Catholic Mission in France, in 1923, as part of the priesthood retreat, began pastoral meetings, “congresses of the Polish clergy” – all priests of the Mission, aimed at the exchange of pastoral experiences and discussion of emerging problems related to Polish emigrants. The Polish Catholic Mission in France was under the jurisdiction of the episcopate of France, which appointed its delegate to the pastoral care of migrants. In 1938, a retreat for Polish priests working for Poles in France was conducted by Fr. Tomasz Mącior SAC. It took place in Clamart near Paris. It was attended by 50 priests with the then rector of the Polish Catholic Mission in France, Fr. F. Cegiełka. After the retreat, the Polish priests’ sessions were traditionally held, in which Polish ambassador Juliusz Łukasiewicz, consul general in Paris, Aleksander Kawałkowski, director of the Catholic Press Agency, Fr. Zygmunt Kaczyński and Paris suffragan bishop, Emanuel Anatol Chaptal participated. The scope of the challenges undertaken by Polish priests is exemplified by the attached Protocol from the Polish Clergy Convention held after the retreat at Clamart on November 25, 1938. A copy of the document is stored in the Archives of the Polish Catholic Mission in France, and the original document is stored in the Archdiocesan Archives in Gniezno.
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