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The Role of Polish Catholic Missions in the Relief Effort for the Catholic University of Lublin after World War II: A Reconnaissance
Abstract
Polish Catholic missions played a huge role in helping the Catholic University of Lublin in the years after World War II. Many of them had existed before, but many were established just after the war so that care could be more easily organized for the multitude of Polish refugees who decided not to return to their country after 1945. Clustered around Polish parishes and precisely Polish Catholic missions, they participated in various ways in helping the Church in Poland, including the Catholic University of Lublin. Many of the testimonies and documents of this assistance, illustrating its scale by various forms, have never been studied. Meanwhile, it is in the archives of the Polish Catholic missions that one can find materials that, due to the confidential nature of the aid campaign, should not have fallen into the hands of representatives of the authorities in Polish People’s Republic. An excellent example is the archive of the Polish Catholic Mission in Great Britain, where one can find correspondence between the rector of the mission, people involved in the activities of the Society of Friends of the Catholic University of Lublin (Towarzystwo Przyjaciół KUL), but also letters illustrating the involvement in this action of the emigration’s protectors, Primate Wyszynski, as well as letters of the rectors of the Catholic University of Lublin sent in the West, which are not available in their Lublin office. A synthesis of the history of the Polish Catholic Missions in the 20th century, with emphasis on the role they played not only in the organization of the émigré pastoral ministry, but also for Catholics at home, including the Catholic University of Lublin, is a research postulate that awaits its historian.
Keywords:
cold war, Polish Catholic missions, Polish emigration, Catholic University of Lublin, Polish Catholic Mission in Great BritainDetails
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
