Beatification of Servant of God, Úrsula Ledóchowska (20 June 1983)
ShareOn Monday, 20 June 1983, the Holy Father celebrated the Rite of Beatification of the Servant of God, Úrsula Ledóchowska, in the Park of Culture and Rest, Poznan. In his homily, the Pope reflected on the confession of Saint Peter and then on the life and work of Blessed Úrsula.
"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!" ( Mt. 16, 16).
I repeated this confession of Peter on October 22, 1978 , when, by the inscrutable designs of Divine Providence, it fell to me to begin service at the See of Peter, in Rome.
Today , I repeat them here, in Poznan, in the place where this confession was pronounced since the most remote times in the territories of the Piasts, after the Baptism of Mieszko in the year 966. Since ancient times the Bishop's lips pronounced this confession of Peter, therefore, already two years after Baptism, Poznan, the first in Poland , "coepit habere episcopum": began to have its own bishop .
"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!" The same confession of Peter was repeated on the lips of ancestors from those ancient times and hearts were opened to the Redeemer of the world, previously unknown, who, as Son of God and consubstantial with the Father, became man and was born of the Virgin Mary.
2. On this confession of Peter from the beginning the Church is built according to the words of Christ: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" ( ibid ., v. 18). Thus, therefore, together with the confession of the first Bishop in Piast Poland, whose name was Jordan , the Church is built on the soil of this our homeland. In the year 1000 Bishop Unger receives in Poznan and Gniezno the Emperor Otto III and the papal legates, who have come for the so-called Assembly of Gniezno to the relics of the Martyr Saint Adalbert. The building of the Church in our homeland proceeds. The Metropolis of Gniezno comes into being, and new episcopal sees are connected to it in Kraków, Wroclaw and Kolobrzeg. The community of those who, still in their ancient mother tongue, repeat the confession of Peter, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God", grows. And from the very beginning, since the time of Mieszko, the episcopal cathedral of Poznan has been named after Saints Peter and Paul. They are also the patron saints of Poznan and their figures are found on the city's coat of arms.
3. Great is my joy to be able to come to Przemyslaw Castle today , when making the Pilgrimage in Poland for the national jubilee of the Lady of Jasna Góra. Great is my joy to be able to come with you, dear Brothers and Sisters, heirs of the past millennium of the Nation and the Church, and repeat Peter's confession. I came here many times, especially during the period of pastoral service of the Metropolitan of Poznan, Anthony Baraniak, of holy memory, whose pastoral strength and whose humility we always surround with deep veneration.
Today, here I greet your Successor in the See of Poznan, appointed bishop together with me, Archbishop Jersey; I also greet the Auxiliary Bishops and all the Representatives of the Episcopate present: the Cardinal Primate, the Cardinal Metropolitan of Krakow, all the Archbishops and the Bishops of Poland. I greet the Metropolitan Chapter, the entire Clergy, the male and female Religious Orders. I welcome all Visitors coming from other places outside the archdiocese.
I know very well that the place where I find myself played a fundamental role not only in the history of Christianity, but also in the history of the Polish state and culture. The Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul testifies that, from the beginning, in this land of the Piasts and in the whole of Poland, the Church was united with Rome. Rome — not only as the See of Peter, but also — as a center of culture . That is why Polish culture has characteristic signs that are mainly Western European.
4. I feel happy to be able to find myself in this place, in the center of the oldest of the Piast lands, where more than a thousand years ago the history of the Nation, the State and the Church began.
Together with Christ, whom Peter confessed to be the Son of the living God, the Gospel and the entire Revelation arrived here. The inhabitants of this land consciously accepted the words of the Creator, pronounced at the beginning: Increase and multiply — subdue and dominate the earth (cf. Gen. 1, 28). These words linked the call to family life with human work at the same time. Our ancestors dominated the land in this vast territory of Greater Poland, cutting down the forests, cultivating the fields, building towns and cities.
After centuries, we are here witnesses to the work of so many generations . There was a time when, in the 19th century, they had to fight to maintain their own place of work, in this Greater Poland, where the occupiers wanted to destroy the national spirit. From that time comes the tradition of a deep bond with the land , the tradition of rational cultivation of the land and the tradition of social organization, which ensured the Polish state of possession. A symbol of the uncompromising defense of the fundamental rights of Poles and farmers was Drzymala's cart. The nicknames of great social achievers are also a symbol , especially the clergy, such as Archbishop Florian Stablewski or priests, such as Father Piotr Mawrzyniak. A support for them, in his time, was Leo XIII 's encyclical Rerum Novarum .
5. For the contemporary generation of working men and above all cultivators of the land, similar support can be the Encyclical Mater et Magistra of John XXIII : "... hence a fundamental problem; — writes in this Encyclical my venerable Predecessor — how to reduce the imbalance in productivity between the agricultural sector, on the one hand, and the industrial sector and the various services, on the other, so that the standard of living of the rural population deviates as little as possible from the standard of living of those who work? in industry and services; so that farmers do not suffer from an inferiority complex, but, on the contrary, persuade themselves that, even in rural areas, they can affirm and improve their personality through work, and look confidently to the future... We are pleased to express here Our complacency to those children of Ours who in different parts of the world are involved in cooperative, professional and trade union organizations, aimed at the economic and social promotion of all cultivators of the earth" (cf. AAS 53, 1961, 432, 437 s.).
6. However, I want to highlight these words of the Social Encyclical with what, in Polish land, I heard from the late Cardinal Primate Stefan Wyszynski . How great was his intuition for this bond between man and the earth, which is the basis of the existence of the entire society! How rightly he warned against the lack of concern for agriculture , the exodus from the land and excessive urbanization! One felt in his words almost a distant echo of that tradition that dates back to the times of the Piasts, that he took from the Bible the call "subdue and dominate the earth" — and in acting on this call, he sought to consolidate the very foundations of this reason of state national and state of the country itself.
This is what, on April 2, 1981, Cardinal Wyszynski said to the representatives of "Rural Solidarity: "When the land is covered in grass, the biggest hurricanes do not shake it easily, even if it is sandy. But when the land becomes a desert place, it is very easy to conquer it... From the novel The Peasants , by Reymont, we know the moving story of Botyna. His death with his arms stretched out over the earth and in the whisper of the winds saying: Lord, 'stay with us', is a very eloquent image. When we meet more closely With the enormous spiritual, moral and strength. social environment of the rural environment, we clearly see how fair the fight for the fundamental rights of the human person is, how motivated is a further reason for respecting those rights, which comes from the fact of owning the land".
I hope that you, Farmers of Greater Poland, you Farmers of my entire Homeland, will bear in mind these words of Cardinal Wyszynski, as the testament of a great Pole, of a great lover of the Polish land and the Polish Nation.
7. "I will bless the Lord at all times, / O His praise will always be on my lips. / Let my soul glory in the Lord, / let the humble hear and rejoice" ( Ps . 33/34, 2-3 ).
On this day I wish in a particular way to bless the Lord, as it is given to me in your midst, dear Compatriots, to be able to elevate to the honors of the altars — through beatification — the Venerable Servant of God, Mother Ursula Ledóchowska .
It is undoubtedly our common joy to be able to carry out this beatification during the national jubilee of Our Lady of Jasna Góra and also within the Year of the Redemption. A Daughter of the well-known Polish family is raised to the glory of the Blessed . The town of Lipnica Murowana, in the diocese of Tarnow, where the family originated, is the same place from which Blessed Simon of Lipnica came in the 15th century. Mother Ursula’s sister by blood, Maria Teresa Ledóchowska, commonly known as the “mother of black Africa” and founder of the Congregation of Saint Peter Claver (Claverian Sisters), was beatified a few years ago by Paul VI.
Úrsula's vocation was youth and their education , in addition to multiple assistance in the pastoral work of the Church. She discovered the path to this vocation at the Convent of the Ursuline Sisters in Krakow. In 1907 he left there — with the permission of Pope Pius X — for apostolic work in the city then called Pietroburg, in Russia. Forced to leave Russia in 1914, she carried out her apostolate in the Scandinavian countries and, at the same time, carried out a great action in favor of her tortured homeland. When, after the war, she asked Pope Benedict XV to approve the new Congregation , which had emerged in such an unusual way during her apostolate, she received his approval. The General Preposit of the Jesuits at that time, Mother Ursula's fleshly brother, Father Vladimiro Ledochowski, was his sister's advisor to the Apostolic See.
A great influence on the lives of Blessed and her brothers and sisters was her uncle, Cardinal Mieczyslaw Ledochowski. Archbishop of Gniezno-Poznan, Primate of Poland and later Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. It is known that, even in prison here in Poznan, he opposed the policy of the Prussian "Kulturkamph", to save the faith, the Polish spirit and the autonomy of the Church in Poland; because of this he was persecuted and imprisoned.
In Pniéwy, near Poznan, there is the mother house of the Congregation of the Ursuline Sisters of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus, commonly called Gray Ursulines. Mother Ursula Ledóchowska was the founder of this Polish branch of the Ursulines; and also of Pniewy's house. However, the Congregation spread to different parts of Poland and outside Europe. At the same time, Mother Ursula carried out her apostolate (at the request of the Apostolic See) in Rome, and there she ended her earthly days, on May 29, 1939; Her tomb is also there, in the Generalate House on Via dei Casaletto.
By including Mother Ursula Ledóchowska in the album of Blesseds, we hand her over to the Church of Poland and the Congregation of the Ursuline Sisters, for the glory of God, for the elevation of human souls and for their eternal salvation .
8. "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." I return to the words of Peter's confession, which resonate in the history of the People of God in this land of Greater Poland, united for more than a thousand years around the cathedral of the Holy Apostles.
Catholic Poznan has been repeating Peter's words in a particular way since the time of the country's independence , reconquered in 1918. Due to the union with Gniezno (which lasted from 1821), Poznan was then also the see of the Primate of Poland. Peter's confession manifested itself in the history of the city, through the construction of the monument to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus . This monument — as an expression of gratitude for the regained independence — was destroyed by the invader during the Second World War. Today, in this place, there are two crosses in memory of the victims of 1956. For various reasons — considering the more remote and more recent past — this place is venerated by Poznan society and "Greater Poland". I, therefore, want to kneel in this place to pay homage...
9. Poznan! Today's Poznan is a city of great tradition. A city that traces a special style of building the common good in the life of the Nation. The city of large industrial establishments. It is the city of contemporary university culture. The city in which Catholic social thought and the national structure of Catholic organizations matured in a very particular way. The city of many publications and many publishing houses.
I wish, when visiting Poznan during this year's pilgrimage, to see it once again in the dimensions of the millennium, but also in the dimensions of the jubilee of Jasna Góra . And so, with all my heart, I approach this place where Princess Dobrawa, wife of Miesko and godmother of the Polish Nation, built, in Ostrow Tumski, the castle chapel, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary .
It is the oldest vestige of this great heritage, which we welcome in this year's solemn national jubilee, of this heritage that we wish to carry on into successive centuries.
I then stop in this place and repeat:
"Mother of God, O virgin Mary,
who is praised by God.
From Your Son, Lord,
Obtain for us, implore for us His mercy — (Kyrie eleison) "
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