Stefan Wyszyński
1901-1981 20th century Feast day: May 28
Firmness without bitterness; the patience of a man who counts in decades rather than in victories.
Who was Stefan Wyszyński?
The son of a village organist, a bishop at forty-five, he became primate of Poland just as the communist regime set out to break the Church. Arrested in September 1953, he spent three years in four guarded residences, where he kept a notebook, planted a garden and prayed for the men watching him. Released, he demanded neither apology nor revenge, and launched a nine-year novena to prepare his people for the millennium of their baptism.
In their own words
I have staked everything on Mary.
We are not allowed to place the things of God on the altar of Caesar. Non possumus.