THE PRIESTS BODY

NAMES

In my memory hundreds of names
Floods like the hydrogen sulfide
The smell is sometimes not the best
After all these years without stopping

I saw the Church from the side
In all glory and shadows
In prose and poems I described
To force myself to afterthought

Maybe someone else when I`m gone
Will gather these memories
Maybe this to somebody will help
To measure the fates of our priests

Is our almost half a million
We are different also are saints
But the most is flagrant when the priest
Deny the faith, turns aside

I encourage to such afterthought
I gathered known persons body
I tried to choose the best here
Who stood in my way

EDWARD FROM TEXAS

Edward from Texas in the village of Nada
On a small river he was born
More than 40 nuns and priests
Come from this small settlement

About vocation he knew from the newspapers
And from stories and sermons
He was eager to go on missions
Many years he gave away to Africans

Finally he went to Siberia
He was extremely good to everyone
In the Parish he had many paupers
And many people from KGB

When they betrayed him, pressed
In order to quickly leave the country
He cried because thought that someone
Would show him gratitude for his goodness

ANTONY FROM WROCŁAW

Father Antoś was a long Bishop`s vicar
In the Diocese of Irkutsk
He could write texts on the computer
Without looking at the keys

He could also walk a few
Thousand kilometers on foot
Also did bike routes
He invented miracles for young people

It is in the mountains some sanctuary
Antoś in these mountains also walked
He even brought your Dad
From Wroclaw to help

He ran the radio together with the brothers
Had ecumenical meetings
But didn`t give him back the church
Although he tried so much of this

WŁODEK BUKOWIŃSKI

Father Bukowiński was diabetic
He visited the sick still on foot
Such a method he invented
To sanctify yourself at any moment

Wojtyła knew him personally
To Kazakhstan He wanted to come
Although felt not at all good
To Bukowiński pay tribute

Hundreds of priests come
To Karaganda to the cathedral
Something of this nobody
Could have dreamed a little earlier

BISHOP RAFAEL

Bishop Rafael had on this calendar
A lot of notes lots of plans
Every day he went to the sick
Or went beyond the great Lviv

He saved the church from closing
He gave the chance to many Catholics
Of both Galician rites…
Unici didn`t have churches

Today the proportions have changed
Unici have many churches
We are still asking to return
The Parish of St` Mary Magdalena

JACEK THE CHAPLAIN

If someone asks who established
In Moscow for Franciscans monastery
It must be admitted that Father Jack
Very hard tried for that

These efforts led to stresses
There were also arguments among the brothers
Jacek wanted to leave and promised
That he could soon take off his cassock

Father Jack became a chaplain
Somewhere in a hospital somewhere in Minnesota
I called him I wrote mails
He was severed contacts with everyone

Because he got married in America
There everything is allowed – no one will rebuke
But to Poland he doesn`t want to come back
Probably he has some resentments

FATHER TOMEK

If someone asks about the cathedral
Who tried for that in Moscow
To recover the small vestibule
To celebrate the first Masses inside

I say how it was:
A young Salesian extremely boisterous
I listened as he said sermons
My jaw dropped in admiration

However, Thomas got really lost
In Odessa he tried to treat himself
What bothered him I don`t know
He was in love with the internet

Youth always loved him
Girls especially liked him
He wanted to help one of them, to treat
Because she could not see almost blind

This girl became the pretext
For the fall of Father Tomek
He left the priesthood on my eyes
It is a punishment from hell for the cathedral

JAREK FROM CLEVELAND

Some priests were landed in America
After working in Russia
This is the fate of the Salesian
He also was called Jaroslaw

I wanted to find him I made
A recording on phone Without an answer
To the “nationalists” Jarek went
A port for the fallen Polish priests

JAREK SPONDAR

“Greek” Redemptorist Father
Left young to Kuzbass
He had in your little house an illegal
Uniate church for his countrymen

He also visited often your relatives
On the famous island of Sakhalin
Who will count how many
Chapels Unici brothers have in Siberia

MISSIONARIES OF LA SALETTE FROM IRKUTSK

Dean Ignatius in Siberia
Acted with the impetus 20 years
He had his parish in the philharmonic
Had also a club for Intelligence

He traveled around towns and villages
He celebrated in distant Wierszyna
From one parish very quickly
Grew deanery and diocese

The Bishops liked him very much
Privately, happened him to mouth off
The Order sent him vicars
But they left the priesthood

Now probably in Kaliningrad
Heals your wounds and memories
I know it after myself – it is not easy
To leave Siberia for longer

GILUNGOWIE

Russians sometimes call
Buddhist monks Gilungowie
In Russia Kalmuks and Buryats
Are brothers of the Buddhist Mongol`

They have more than ten monasteries
In them they sing your mantras nicely
Bells incenses and carpets
Fill the monastery space

People sit on pillows
Can feel as at home there
But the entangled theology
Doesn`t come into the mind

IMAM FROM CZYTA

In Czyta I went to the mosque
I wasn`t afraid because they are Tatars
Always they are friendly to Poles
So I went to chat

Imam asked me a long time
About various things in theology
I answered very politely
What I remembered from the Seminary

I talked a lot about the Pope
How He respects every faith
Imam patted me on the back:
“I see that you are a Muslim”

JOHANN LANG

Ian Lang German Father martyr
For some time he lectured in Latin
He had the status of a lecturer
So for some time he was a free man

Then when they remembered
Sent him to the Altai Mountains
There he renovated people pots
Until one day he died of hunger

The organist brother of Father Ian
Survived and left the offspring
Once accident on the street
I met an organist`s relative

I asked when she would come
To Mass at our church
She said that they enough suffered
And that she at all wasn`t going

This was happened in Novocherkassk
I think that to this day
Many offended at God and the Church
Lives in the “Mommy of Russia”

REINALDO FROM SPOLETO

In Tana Azow almost 200 years
Was a Catholic mission
Bishops from Genova and Venice
Dominicans – smaller brothers

The first was Reinald from Spoleto
As a mantra I reminisce this name
700 years after his death
Still go on memory about him in Tana

KORDASIEWICZ

Father Kordasiewicz was a parish priest
Probably the last in Rostov on Don
Old people told me that
He was taken ill because he caught a cold

That Stanisław had a great funeral
That he lies in the Bracki Cemetery
However, in other documents
Is written that he was shot dead…

PRANAJTIS

Pranajtis who died in St. Petersburg
Were arranged two large funerals
He wanted to rest in a crypt under the church
Which he had built in Tashkent

He invented that will be cheapest
When he will produce the blocks himself
He washed sand next to the river
But he needed a lot of people

He would have asked that the officers
From the Austrian army, Catholics
Who were there as prisoners
That they could be employed in the parish

Pranajtis a Hebrew man
Could have become a bishop in Żmudź
But he refused because in Tashkent
He wanted to finish the great cathedral

He left it in not completed condition
The Soviets turned this into a warehouse
Then they wanted to built there
A philharmonic but didn`t manage

TWO FROM SLOVAKIA

From newspapers I know about two
A native from Slovakia but they came
From distant Australia and from America
Two priests to work in Russia

They both tried their best
A magnificent church near Moscow was built
They also helped the poor
But they finished them both

Always there is a conspiracy theory
Maybe help in explaining
Why so many priests in Russia
Have been finished by “unknown persecutors”

UNDERPANTS

One priest asked friends for
Underwear, a hat, long johns
In prison he suffered apparently
From hunger but also from could

FATHER PRAWDA

I remember how an old Salesian
From the Czech Republic where little priests too
Came to set up missions in Moscow
Familiar me Father Prawda

Was some Prawda in the city of Baku
I don`t know if he the same or different
The Pope John Paul Great
Visited the Salesians in Baku

Then it was said then is not alive
I don`t know in what circumstances
I felt sorry for him, white hair
Skinny like chips, quietly gone

GUNCZAGA

The Slovak Father to Moscow came
To put on a cassock
When he was in Slovakia was a doctor
He was ordained in the underground

BISHOP TADEUSZ

Tadeusz wery much wanted to be a priest
After graduation he applied to Lithuania
There he registered
To start the seminary in Kaunas

He got a parish in the Gate of Dawn
Then was directed to Grodno
Two years was ordinary
And finally he got access in Moscow

16 years he worked there
The Nuncio again sent him to Mińsk
Tadeusz has many talents
To make our church come into being again

To all seemed that are no
Poles - Catholics in Russia
Now this will deny
No solid statistic

BISHOP NEVEUX

20 years lived Eugene
French Father Assumptionist
In a large mining town
Makiejewka in Ukraine

He wrote reports to nuncio
After the imprisonment of the Saratov` Bishops
That must someone new
To organize a church

In the sacristy he was ordained
At five o c`lock morning in Lubianka
In Moscow 10 years he worked
10 years was treated in France

What a disease tired him:
Your heart got out of the interrogations
He was searched every day
He hid in the French embassy

He was waiting for promised visa
He obtained it on the death bed
Bishop martyr of those times
He was very tormented by the Soviets

JAREK FROM DONETSK

Jarek in Donetsk was a parish priest
Young hansome Christ monk
With the guitar he everywhere appeared
In various universities, by the fountain…

When he returned to his housekeeper
I know it from her lips
Probably true that he fell asleep on knees
She pulled off his shoes

ANTONY PACYFIK

One a Smaller Brother from Szargorod
Appeared often in Donbas
He collected addresses in Podole
To relatives who were leaving…

Many in the mines worked
Antoś wanted to find them all
That`s how not easy started
To create a parish in Donbas

The greatest compatriots they found
In Makiejewka, there he was stopping
Probably he would have worked a long time
He died in an accident on a motorcycle

BISHOP WOJNO-JASIENIECKI

Mr. Jasieniecki was a doctor
Author of a book on gangrene
He met his wife in Khabarovsk
Took her to heal to Tashkent

The family of wife forced
That this pious men – Catholic
Before he got married
That he would accept Russian faith – Orthodoxy

The doctor surrendered to these prompting
For love not for belief
Tuberculosis finished his wife
So as a widower he became a priest

Those times were not the best
The Commune was trotting on heels
Before each difficult operation
Łukasz prayed before the Icon

When someone took the cross from the hospital
He said that he would not heal
Soon Łukasz became a bishop
But soon before arrest

WOJNO-II

On the war he became famous again
As an outstanding surgeon doctor
As a reward he was sent again
To Symferopol in the Crimea

Łukasz has been blind for the last
Seven years of an interesting life
He was quite raw and impulsive
He continued to write scientific books

He was proclaimed a Saint
By the Moscow Patriarchate after 40 years
On the icon he has a scalpel in hand
To see also sharp barbed wire