Bishop attends Blessed’s ceremony

BY ED WEST
AUXILIARY BISHOP Alan Hopes of Westminster was among dozens of senior Churchmen who attended the beatification of Fr Stanislaus Papczynski in Poland on September 16.
He joined a crowd of 100,000 from as far away as California to venerate the 17th century founder of the Marian Order. Six cardinals, 500 priests and Polish President Lech Kaczynski also attended the gathering at Lichen, with Pope Benedict XVI paying tribute on two enormous television screens to “a priest who was exemplary in preaching, in the formation of the laity, a father of the poor and an apostle of intercessory prayer for the dead”.
Born in 1631, Stanislaus made the olive branch and dove the symbol of his order after witnessing the horrors of war serving as chaplain to Polish troops. Stanislaus founded the Marians in 1673. In 1815 the order came under the rule of tsarist Russia and by 1908, after a century of oppression, there was just one Marian left. Today there are hundreds of priests in the order.
In the crowd was a fiveyear-old boy, from Elk in northern Poland, called Sebastian. Hehad been declared dead in the womb before his mother’s cousin prayed for the intercession of Fr Stanislaus.