The apostle of Kazakhstan who defied persecution for love of Jesus

Blessed Władysław Bukowiński endured life-threatening situations to carry out pastoral work under brutal regimes

Nearly five decades after his death, Polish diocesan priest Father Władysław Bukowinski is remembered for preaching the Gospel to the people of Kazakhstan, defying great difficulties including war and persecution.

An ethnic Pole who was born and brought up in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, the priest was arrested three times and spent about 13 years in concentration camps.

“Blessed Władysław Bukowinski became an active and deep root of the flowering of the living Church in Kazakhstan, and in particular in Karaganda,” Bishop Adelio Dell’Oro of Karaganda Diocese in Kazakhstan told the Vatican’s Fides news agency in a recent interview.

The missionary priest faced so many ordeals, but these failed to deter his calmness and firm resolve to evangelize and bring the message of the love of Jesus to the people he worked with, the Italian-born bishop said.

Bukowinski who was born on Dec. 22, 1904, was ordained a diocesan priest in Krakow Diocese, Poland on June 28, 1931.

During World War II, he served as parish priest of Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral at Lutsk in Poland. He was arrested by the Soviet Secret Police on Aug. 22, 1940 and sentenced to 8 harsh years in prison for his activities as a Catholic priest in a Soviet-controlled area.

The punishment was short as German forces soon overran the territory and he was released on June 23, 1941.

Father Bukowinski defied the Nazi policy of ethnic cleansing of Jews. When he resumed his pastoral work after release, he started hiding Jewish children with Catholic families.

The second arrest was on Jan. 3, 1945, wherein he was imprisoned in Kyiv along with Bishop Adolf Szelążek of Lutsk Diocese and the diocesan priests.

He along with the other prisoners was accused of treason and sentenced to 10 years in a gulag — the Soviet equivalent of a Nazi concentration camp — first introduced by Vladimir Lenin and made worse during the Stalin era in Soviet Russia.

Even during his days in the gulag, Father Bukowinski administered the sacraments and visited the sick.

He was released on Aug. 10, 1954, and ordered to remain in exile in Karaganda, the then Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.

During his time there he took up employment as a watchman at a construction site and engaged secretly in pastoral activities including the celebration of Mass in people’s homes.

In his memoir, the priest wrote about his experiences in secret evangelization.

“I am a peddler all the time. (…) All my ministry takes place in other people’s homes. (…) It usually goes like this: I come in the afternoon or before the evening. First of all, I am arranging an altar. It is an ordinary table, as long as it stands firm and does not wobble,” he wrote, according to Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance. 

“The table is covered with a white cloth. A large box or two thick books are put on the table, covered with a white handkerchief, and on it is put a crucifix. Candles are placed in candlesticks or, if they are not, in a glass with salt. Above, one or two paintings are hung and the altar is ready. Then I confess. I celebrate Mass at 9 p.m. (…). There are cases when at Holy Mass Poles and Germans come together, I speak Russian for this sermon,” he added.

In 1955, he rejected the opportunity to go back to Poland and opted to stay in Kazakhstan.

His third and last arrest came on Dec. 3, 1958. He was accused of illegal activities and was sentenced to 3 years in prison in a gulag in Irkutsk, Russia.

On completion of his prison sentence, he returned to Karaganda and resumed his pastoral duties.

He died from a hemorrhage on Dec. 3, 1974, and his relics were later enshrined in the Karaganda Cathedral in 2008.

Pope Francis confirmed his heroic virtues in 2015 and declared him Venerable. About a year later, a miracle attributed to him was approved by the Vatican.

On Sept. 11, 2017, Cardinal Angelo Amato, on behalf of Pope Francis, beatified him in the Karaganda Cathedral.

Bishop Del Oro stresses that the Catholic community in Karaganda is a testimony to the saintly missionary’s work.

“A Catholic community was born, forced to remain underground, but despite this, it was alive and active: this first underground church became a hope that supported thousands of deportees, mostly Poles from Ukraine and Germans,” the prelate told Fides.

The Parish of St. Joseph in Karaganda is one of the first parishes that was officially registered during the communist regime in 1977.

“In that year, with the active participation of believers, the foundation of the future Catholic Church was laid: in fact, everyone took part in the construction of the church, from the smallest to the oldest, including the disabled and the sick,” the prelate said.

The spiritual legacy of Blessed Władysław Bukowinski lives on through the numerous vocations and the missionary zeal among the Catholics of Karaganda.

Karaganda Diocese includes two regions and occupies an area two and a half times larger than Italy. About twenty parishes are separated from each other by huge distances: the furthest has two parishes  1,700 km from each other.

Catholics number about 250,000 in a population of 15 million in Kazakhstan, the largest among central Asian countries. Altogether Christians make up about 26 percent of the population.

The Catholic Church has 3 dioceses and one apostolic vicariate covering 70 parishes. Some 91 priests serve local Catholics, mostly ethnic Poles, Germans and Lithuanians, and their descendants.

The Church in Kazakhstan is now part of the newly-created the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Central Asia.

Pope Francis is expected to visit Kazakhstan, during the 7th Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, in September.

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