Mary responds to the Vows of the Polish Nation

From 1945 onwards, the Communist regime that ruled Poland instituted indiscriminate repression against Catholics. By 1953, 10% of priests were in prison. But in 1956, Cardinal Hlond received a divine illumination: the Virgin Mary was going to help the Polish nation. Indeed, in less than ten years, the prophecy came true: the Catholic faith was inexplicably reborn thanks to the act of servitude of the country to "the maternal love of Mary", officially pronounced on 3 May 1966 at Jasna Gora by the Primate of Poland and accepted by Saint Paul VI.

Shutterstock, Dawid Lech.

Reasons to believe:

Faith has returned to Poland in a way that was unexpected and contrary to anything that could have been foreseen, which makes it a truly extraordinary phenomenon that would be difficult to explain without the intervention of Heaven.

The three men who succeeded in reviving the faith in Poland, by inviting people to entrust themselves to Mary, are exceptional personalities, highly recognised both by government officials and by the universal Church: Cardinal August Hlond (1881 - 1948), President of the Polish Bishops' Conference from 1926 until his death, and Venerable since 2018; Blessed Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (1901 - 1981), successor of the previous Cardinal, Primate of Poland, Archbishop of Warsaw, and beatified on 12 September 2021; and Pope Saint John Paul II.

On 26 August 1956, at the national shrine of Jasna Gora, the "vows of the nation" written by Cardinal Wyszynski, then imprisoned by the Communist government, were read before a million faithful. The Vow of Servitude to Mary, tied to the 1,000th anniversary of the birth of Poland, gave rise to an unprecedented spiritual surge: in 2014, 92.2% of Poles were Catholics, after more than half a century of relentless persecution.

The energy displayed by Cardinal Wyszynski in particular is truly inexplicable: despite being imprisoned for three years and subjected to various forms of pressure and harassment, he succeeded in bringing Mary's message of hope to every Polish diocese. Between 1956 and 1981, he delivered 11,000 homilies and speeches. He rebuilt around fifty churches, including two cathedrals, that had been destroyed in the previous years.

In 1957, a miracle occurred. The conditions that Cardinal Wyszynski had set for the government to accept his release, which was then notified to him, were all accepted by the regime: the release of several other bishops, the cancellation of a government decree that gave the State the right to appoint religious leaders, and more.

From 26 August 1957 to 1966, ten dioceses welcomed the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa; at the same time, popular piety took off again and vocations multiplied. The image of Our Lady of Czestochowa travelled the length and breadth of the country for twenty-five years, despite the increasing repressive measures taken by the State: when the image was seized by the police in September 1966, its wooden frame continued to travel from parish to parish.

By 1950, Poland's seminaries were empty, convents were threatened or closed, and the fabric of Christian society was in turmoil. But between 1970 and 2015, at a time when vocations were plummeting throughout Europe, the number of religious priests in Poland increased by 72%.

A law passed on 20 March 1958 confiscated almost all the land owned by the religious orders (65,500 hectares out of a total of 75,000) for the benefit of the State. Barely fifteen years later, this land was once again in the possession of the religious orders.

In 1976, when Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was invited to preach the Lenten retreat for Pope Paul VI, he spoke of the journeys of the image of Mary in his country. On 4 June 1979, Saint John Paul II, who had ascended the throne of Saint Peter the previous year, renewed the Act of Servitude to Mary.

In 1989, the prophecy revealed to Cardinal Hlond was fully realised before the whole world: the Soviet regime collapsed, giving the Polish Church back its freedom, under the pontificate of a Polish pope.

Summary:

After the ravages of the Second World War, the Warsaw government, closely tied to Soviet Russia, prepared to launch its programme to de-Christianise the country - the idea being that, in a 'socialist' republic, religion should be eliminated as far as possible from the public life of the country and the culture of the 'masses'. The Church in Poland was threatened right down to its very foundations: one priest in ten was in imprisoned, Catholic associations and the Catholic press were dismantled, and the property of orders and congregations was confiscated. It was a downward spiral that seemed impossible to stop.

Cardinal August Hlond, President of the Polish Bishops' Conference from 1926 to 1948, who had been imprisoned by the Nazis and then released by the Allies in 1945, returned to Poland. But the Stalinist regime wanted to eliminate Christian leaders. The prelate was spied on, arrested and released several times. Providentially, he escaped repeated assassination attempts.

Throughout these trials, Hlond had absolute confidence in Jesus and Mary. He knew how much the Mother of God had played a prominent role in the life of his country for a thousand years. One day, while he was praying fervently, he had an epiphany: Polish Catholics were going to regain their freedom thanks to the miraculous help of the Virgin, whose maternal love protected his nation.

His successor, Blessed Cardinal Wyszynski, was in turn imprisoned for no real reason. His influence was impressive among Catholics and he had already worked hard to revive the Polish Church, albeit often clandestinely. Together with the other bishops, he pronounced a first act of total offering to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary on 8 September 1946.

Cardinal Wyszynski remained in prison from 1953 to 1956. He suffered humiliation and torture without his faith ever wavering. He knew, as Archbishop Hlond knew, that Our Lady would not let Poland sink in this manner. While still a prisoner, Wyszynski had a supernatural intuition: to prepare for the thousandth anniversary of the birth of Poland by inviting the whole country, all social classes included, in a great novena to Mary. But as a prisoner in the regime's jails, how was he to go about it?

In just a few days, Wyszynski drew up a text entitled "Vows of the Nation", a vast pastoral and spiritual programme to ask the Virgin's intercession for the whole country. This document was read on 26 August 1956 before a million faithful gathered at Jasna Gora. Still a prisoner, Wyszynski could not physically take part in the ceremony.

It was a huge success. As soon as he was released from prison, the cardinal set to work, inviting every believer, every family, and every parish to take part in his programme of Catholic renewal. An incredible initiative was set up: an image of Our Lady of Czestochowa travelled the length and breadth of the country to restore hope and peace. The image travelled to the four corners of Poland for a quarter of a century without interruption, despite attempts by the Warsaw government to stop it.

From 1957 to 1966, the spiritual recovery was exceptional, with an increase in the number of priests, nuns and religious, conversions and so on. However, Catholics still did not have complete control over their destiny, as the government continued its policy of repression against the clergy and the faithful.

Each year of the great novena saw the implementation of various projects (construction or repair of church buildings, creation of new parishes, increased presence of Catholic associations in working-class or intellectual circles, etc.). In 1966, the Polish state discovered to its astonishment that it had been unable to do anything about the Church, which it considered to be a target for assassination.

On 3 May 1966, at the end of the novena in preparation for the anniversary of the founding of Poland, Cardinal Wyszynski pronounced the act of "servitude" to the Mother of God, still at Jasna Gora. This was the ecclesiastical expression of the essential tie between Mary and the Polish nation. It was already the famous motto of Pope John Paul II, Totustuus ("all yours", Mary), the first Polish pontiff in history, who, in 1979, travelled to his native country, where he pronounced the same act of consecration a second time. This consecration was fully accepted by Saint Paul VI as the fruit of the celebration of Poland's millennium.

From then on, as all the figures show, there was a revival of the faith throughout the country, despite the fact that the government was doing everything it could to harm the faithful and Catholic leaders. Arrests decreased. The pressure of the police who used to monitor the actions of bishops was easing. Churches were filling up and the number of churchgoers was rising at an unprecedented rate - a unique occurrence in the Europe of the Thirty Glorious Years, which had been largely de-Christianised.

In 1993, the whole world learnt that one of the remarkable fruits of the Act of Servitude had just come to fruition: after more than forty years of oppression, the Polish State and the country's Church signed a concordat that put an end to a number of tensions. By this time, the sinister anti-Catholic policy seemed to be a thing of the past.

After Cardinals Hlond and Wyszynski, it was of course St John Paul II, so close to his two predecessors in thought and action, who witnessed the collapse of Soviet communism and the liberalisation of his country. This Pope knew that everything had begun with the travels of the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa, and that everything had been transformed by the Act of Servitude to the love of Mary.

Since 1966, the fruits of the Polish consecration to Our Lady are quite simply inexplicable without the intervention of Heaven.

Patrick Sbalchiero

Beyond reasons to believe:

By placing the Polish nation under the maternal gaze of Mary, the country's Church not only warded off the repressive and destabilising measures of the Communist government, but also enabled a new spiritual impetus to blossom throughout society, something unique in Poland's thousand-year history.

Going further:

The Glories Of Czestochowa And Jasna Gora: Miracles Attributed To Our Lady's Intercession by Our Lady of Czestochowa Foundation, Marian Pr (January 1, 2004)

More information:

Sacred Weapons, Profane Enemies: Saint John Paul Ii's War on Communism by Geoff Bardell, lulu.com; First Edition (February 13, 2014)
Timothy Byrnes and Peter J. Katzenstein, "The Catholic Church and politics in Poland", in Religioninan expendingEurope, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel, Harper Perennial (March 3, 2020)