Abstract

Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński was declared the patron saint of the year 2021 by resolutions of the Sejm and Senate of the Republic of Poland in order to commemorate the 120th anniversary of his birth and the 40th anniversary of his death. He was beatified together with Mother Elżbieta Róża Czacka, the founder of the Society for the Care of the Blind in Laski, as mentioned by the author of this article. The short biography of Father Wyszyński she has compiled focuses on the period before he was appointed Primate of Poland (1948), and especially on the war years. In the autumn of 1939, at the invitation of Mother Czacka and Father Władysław Kornilowicz, Wyszyński came to the Zamoyski estate in Kozłówka, where some of the blind evacuated from Laski were staying. He then moved to Żułów, which was an estate owned by Czacka’s society. He hid in many places in the Zamość region, mainly in the Skierbieszów municipality: Podwysokie (at the home of the Szafran family), Marcinówka (at the home of the Wojtasiuk family), Majdan Skierbieszowski, Stanisławka (at the home of the Nowosad family), Rozdoły, Żukowo, Dębina, and Bończa. As a chaplain of the Home Army partisans of the Skierbieszów region, he used the surname Zuzelski and the pseudonym Siostra Cecylia (Sister Cecilia). Wyszyński was guarded by a group of soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Józef Śmiech, aka Ciąg. During the Warsaw Uprising, he was a chaplain in the Kampinos Group of the Home Army and in the insurgents’ hospital in Laski. As Bishop of Lublin (since 1946), he came to Zamość many times and visited the parishes where he had hidden during the occupation, often greeted by the famous horse escorts. In 2014, a hiking trail called “In the Footsteps of Father Stefan Wyszyński” was created.