On August 9th, the Church observes the Liturgical Memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).
Thirty-five years ago, two Polish missionaries of the Conventual Franciscans, Fr. Zbigniew Strzałkowski and Fr. Michał Tomaszek, were martyred in Peru. Until the very last moment, they could have saved their lives by withdrawing from their missionary work. To do so, however, would have meant abandoning the faithful entrusted to their care.
Had Edith Stein, the Carmelite nun, taken matters into her own hands sooner and not concerned herself with the fate of her sister, she most likely could have escaped to neutral Switzerland and saved her life. God yet had other plans, and she was determined to remain faithful to Him in every respect.
When the Germans invaded Holland, the Gestapo finally came for her and her sister, Rosa Stein, who had also converted. Taking Rosa by the hand, Edith said simply, “Come, we are going for our people.” In 1942, she died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, a German concentration camp.
MARTYRDOM AND ACCOLADE
Back to our Franciscans.
“I met Zbigniew just a few days before his martyrdom and asked whether they had been receiving threats. He smiled, and after a moment of silence replied, ‘We cannot abandon the people. You never know what may happen, but if they kill us, bury us here,” recalled Sr. Marlene Trelles.
At that time, the communist organization Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) was terrorizing the country and eventually came to regard the presence of the Franciscan missionaries as a significant obstacle to its revolutionary campaign.
The terrorists surrounded the friary, tied up the two priests, and drove them out of town. They executed the two friars with two shots to the backs of their heads. Beside their bodies, they left a message: “This is how the lackeys of imperialism die. Long live the People’s Guerrilla Army.”
The two Polish friars were killed because people had fallen prey to a godless ideology. The Carmelite nun from Wrocław (Breslau) was killed because others had succumbed to a different plague: the ideology of racial supremacy. These were the fruits of two totalitarian systems—the Red and the Brown.
Crowds of faithful gathered for the funeral to bid a final farewell to their beloved priests. Many were already praying to God through their intercession.
On August 12, 1991, the Government of Peru posthumously awarded the martyrs the nation’s highest honour, the Order of the Sun of Peru. Three decades later, on December 8, 2022, Polish President Andrzej Duda conferred on both friars the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in recognition of their missionary service, their outstanding commitment to those in need, and their efforts to promote education among the people of Peru.
On December 5, 2015, Fathers Michał Tomaszek and Zbigniew Strzałkowski, OFM Conv., were declared Blesseds.
VENERATION
To this day, the people of Pariacoto and Chimbote have not forgotten the two Polish friars. They continue to speak of them with deep affection, and many who remember the Franciscan missionaries still turn to them in prayer.
“Many people ask for prayer cards containing second-class relics. The cards feature photographs of the missionaries along with small pieces of the clothing they wore in Peru. We have prepared them in nine languages—Polish, English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Lithuanian, Slovak, and Japanese. These prayer cards have already reached every continent,” said Brother Jan Hruszowiec, promoter of the martyrs’ cause.
“On Oct. 13, 2025, we presented our beloved Mother at Jasna Góra in Częstochowa with a votive offering: the 100,000th rosary containing relics of our martyrs. We also chose Jasna Góra as the place to inaugurate the observance of the 35th anniversary of their martyrdom—not in Poland, but at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. I had the grace of being there on February 7–8th to celebrate the opening of the anniversary year with the faithful.
The shrine holds special significance for the Polish-American community. It is also worth noting that, after Poland, the United States is home to the second-largest number of places in the world where first-class relics—fragments of our martyrs’ bodies—are preserved. “Today, they are venerated at 72 locations across the United States,” Brother Jan shared on another occasion.
A GUEST FROM BEYOND
From June 1 to 10, 2022, Marco de Angelis served as a Caritas volunteer in Owo, Nigeria. On June 5th, while attending Mass, he experienced the worst nightmare of his life.
Among those caught in the terrorist attack was his friend, Osagie, 38, whose only son, Tony, had stepped outside to buy snacks because neither of them had eaten breakfast. As he reached the church entrance, the gunmen opened fire. While others ran for cover, Osagie rushed toward her son in a desperate attempt to save him. In that terrifying moment, Marco remembered the prayer cards he was carrying.
Because of space limitations, the original account, published on the official Franciscan website, has been shortened and stylistically adapted for English-speaking readers.
Marco tells his story:
“I prayed in my own words, asking Fathers Zbigniew and Michał for help. Moments later, a young man appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed my shirt, pulled me towards Mrs. Osagie, and together we eased her to the ground. Supporting her head, he urged us to lie flat beneath the wooden pews. […]
From where we lay, we could see bodies scattered across the church grounds. Many were already dead; others were still clinging to life. […]
I asked the young man his name several times, but he never answered. Instead, he urged Mrs. Osagie and me to stay among the bodies. When I asked once more who he was, he simply said he had come to help us.
Holding Osagie’s hand, he gently told her to let go of her son, explaining that he had already died and that she must try to escape. He assured her that her son would soon be home with our Father in Heaven.
I was in shock. Nothing made sense. Once the gunfire subsided, I ran to a nearby house, where members of the rescue team found me and took me to hospital.
The following day, I returned to Owo to search for the man who had saved Mrs. Osagie and me. I asked local residents and the Franciscans, but not a soul recognised the man I described.”
After returning home, Marco began to suspect that the mysterious rescuer was one of the two Blesseds, although he had appeared much younger. Sister Barbara, a Polish nun, strengthened that conviction when she showed him photographs of the missionaries taken in their youth. Marco became convinced the man was Fr. Zbigniew.
A year later, he met Osagie again and showed her the same photograph.
“Osagie, was this him? Was he the one who saved us?”
With tears in her eyes, she replied, “It was him.”
Marco then asked whether she still thought about her son. She said she had come to accept his death and believed that her little boy, who had died as a martyr, was with Jesus Christ.
The terrorist attack claimed the lives of forty-one people, including children and the elderly. Those who survived continue to carry the physical and psychological scars of that day.
In closing, let us reflect on these words of Sacred Scripture:
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace. (Wis. 3: 1-3)
Image by Francisofmconv from Wikimedia Commons
