Fr. Ciszek

Fr. Ciszek was a Jesuit priest from Pennsylvania who spent 23 years as a prisoner in Russia. According to a friend of Fr. Ciszek's:

Born in Shenandoah, Penn., in 1904, Fr. Ciszek is the only American Jesuit who responded to Pius XI's call to return alive from the Soviet Union. He was imprisoned there for nearly 23 years -- five years in the infamous Lubianka prison in Moscow and 10 years in the northernmost gulag archipelago in Siberia. An additional eight years found Fr. Ciszek restricted by the atheist Communists to the cities of Norilsk, Dudinka, Kras­noyarsk, and Abakan. Fr. Ciszek's journey may be read in his two books With God in Russia and He Leadeth Me; the former details his earthly journey and the latter his spiritual journey. The travels of Fr. Ciszek are, in themselves, the story of what one man did to assist thousands of Russian Orthodox in their darkest hours. Twelve years after Fr. Ciszek's death in 1984, the papers for his sainthood were delivered to Rome. His papers were prepared at the University of Scranton and the Byzantine Carmelite monasteries in Sugarloaf and Shenandoah. I had the honor of hosting Fr. Ciszek on a 30-lecture tour in southern California in 1964, two years after President John F. Kennedy exchanged a Soviet spy for Fr. Ciszek. It became readily apparent why the cause for his sainthood has advanced to Rome.

And from Chronicles, an article on "Red October."

Up to a quarter of the world’s six-and-a-half billion people live under regimes that claim to be inspired by what happened in St. Petersburg on this day nine decades ago, but there is no true zeal in their rulers’ rhetoric and no fire in their hearts.

Share