First visit to Poland led to Iron Curtain’s fall, historians say 45 years after St. John Paul II landmark trip June 3, 2024By Filip Mazurczak OSV News Filed Under: News, Vatican, World News Forty-five years ago, on June 2, St. John Paul II started his first papal pilgrimage to his native Poland, then shackled by a communist dictatorship. The visit had not only an enormous impact on the spiritual renewal of the Polish nation, paving the way for democratic changes, but it also inspired future freedom fighters in other parts of the Soviet empire.
Catholic wartime teacher never abandoned her call, even under threat of arrest May 14, 2024By Filip Mazurczak OSV News Filed Under: News, Saints, World News This Catholic teacher worked to bolster the spiritual and cultural identity of Polish slave laborers, for which she died a martyr’s death in the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp. Blessed Natalia Tulasiewicz was 39 when she perished in 1945 just as World War II horrors were coming to an end.
Polish diocesan phase closes in cause of Catholic midwife who delivered babies at Auschwitz March 11, 2024By Filip Mazurczak OSV News Filed Under: Feature, News, Saints, World News Stanislawa Leszczynska, a Polish midwife imprisoned at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Nazi Germany-occupied Poland, delivered 3,000 babies of different nationalities and treated them and their mothers with heroic humanity.
