EUROPE/POLAND - The Polish parliament is hosting an exhibition dedicated to Cardinal Kozlowiecki, a missionary in Zambia for 50 years

Thursday, 12 April 2012

Warsaw (Agenzia Fides) - "In search of reconciliation - with open hands" is the title of the exhibition dedicated to the figure of Cardinal Adam Kozlowiecki (1911-2007), missionary in Africa for half a century, inaugurated on 11 April at the headquarters of the Polish Parliament. According to information sent to Fides, the exhibition is located in the main hall of the Parliament, in Warsaw, and is open until April 13. Organised by the Parliamentary Group for Africa and by Cardinal Kozlowiecki Foundation "Heart Without Frontiers", the exhibition will be mounted at the European Parliament and the Parliament of Zambia.
Cardinal Adam Kozlowiecki, S.J., was born on 1 April 1911 in Huta Komorowska in Kolbuszowa (currently Diocese of Sandomierz). After high school, he entered the Society of Jesus. He studied in Cracow (1931-1933) and Lublin (1934-1938), where on June 24, 1937 he was ordained a priest. In the second half of 1938 he went to Lviv for the "third probation", the young Jesuit’s last stage of formation. At the beginning of World War II, on November 10, 1939, he was arrested by the Gestapo along with 24 brothers while he was in the Jesuit college in Krakow. He was incarcerated in the prison of Crakow and Wisnicz, then interned in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau, until April 29, 1945.
He went as a missionary to Northern Rhodesia (today’s Zambia) on April 14, 1946, and immediately gave impetus to a flourishing activity, especially in the field of education, in the region of Kasisi. For two years he was also superior of the religious house. When in 1950 the Holy See erected the Prefecture of Lusaka to the status of Apostolic Vicariate, Fr. Adam Kozlowiecki was appointed its first Apostolic Administrator. He carried out his work with zeal, visiting parishes and houses of the mission, in small towns and in the forest, establishing personal relationships with missionaries. The growth of the Church in those areas of mission was the motivation that led Pius XII to appoint him Bishop and Vicar Apostolic, on June 4, 1955, and finally Archbishop of Lusaka, from 25 April 1959 to 29 May 1969. Created cardinal by John Paul II at the consistory in 1988, Adam Kozlowiecki had been for over 50 years a missionary in Africa, where he died on September 28, 2007, in Lusaka. (MF/SL) (Agenzia Fides 12/4/2012)


Share: