Walter Ciszek

Early life and studies

Ciszek was born on November 4, 1904 in the mining town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania to Polish immigrants Mary (Mika) and Martin Ciszek, who had emigrated to the United States in the 1890s. A former gang member, he shocked his family by deciding to become a priest. Ciszek entered the Jesuit novitiate in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1928. The following year, he volunteered to serve as a missionary to Russia, which had become the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution 12 years before. Many religious rights for Soviet residents were curtailed, the religious believers were openly persecuted, and few religious believers had access to the services of a priest. Pope Pius XI made an appeal to priests from around the world to go to Russia as missionaries.

In 1934, Ciszek was sent to Rome to study theology and Russian language, history and liturgy at the Pontifical Russian College (or 'Russicum'). In 1937, he was ordained a priest in the Byzantine Rite in Rome taking the name of Vladimir (see Russian Greek Catholic Church).

In 1938, Ciszek was sent to the Jesuit mission in Albertyn in eastern Poland. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland and forced Ciszek to close his mission. Arriving in Lviv, he realized that it would be very easy for a priest or two to enter the Soviet Union amid the streams of exiles going East. After securing the permission of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, he crossed the border in 1940 under the assumed identity of Władymyr Łypynski. With two of his fellow Jesuits, he travelled 2400 km (1500 mi) by train to the logging town of Chusovoy, in the Ural Mountains. For one year, he worked as an unskilled logger, while discreetly performing religious ministry at the same time.

Captivity in the Soviet Union

Ciszek was arrested in 1941 under accusations of espionage for the Vatican and sent to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, operated by the NKVD (internal security agency). There he spent a total of five years, most of which in solitary confinement. In 1942, he signed a confession under severe torture. He was convicted of espionage; he was sentenced to 15 years hard labor in the GULAG.

Ciszek was to remain in Lubyanka for four more years. In 1946, he was sent by train to Krasnoyarsk then 20 days by boat to Norilsk in Siberia. There, he was to shovel coal onto freighter vessels, and later transferred to work in coal mines. A year later, he was sent to work in construction at an ore processing plant. From 1953 to 1955, he worked in mines. His memoirs provide a vivid description of the revolts that spread through the GULAG in the aftermath of Joseph Stalin's death (see Norilsk uprising).

Throughout his lengthy imprisonment, Ciszek continued to pray, to celebrate Divine Liturgy, hear confessions, conduct retreats and perform parish ministry. Until he was allowed to write to America in 1955, he was presumed dead by both his family and the Jesuit Order.

By April 22, 1955, Ciszek's hard labor sentence was complete, and he was released with restrictions in the city of Norilsk. At this time, he was finally able to write to his sisters in the United States.

Ciszek was ordered by the KGB to move in 1958 to Krasnoyarsk, where he secretly established mission parishes. After the KGB learned of this, he was forcibly transferred to Abakan, 160 km (100 mi) to the south, where he worked as an automobile mechanic for four more years. In 1963, he finally received a letter from his sisters in the U.S. Several months later, the Soviet Union decided to return him (and an American student Marvin W. Makinen) to the United States in exchange for two Soviet agents. He was not informed of this until he was delivered to an official of the U.S. State Department and told he was still an American citizen.

Release and later life

After nearly 23 years of imprisonment, Ciszek was released on October 12, 1963, in exchange for two Soviet agents (Ivan Egorov, a Soviet U.N. functionary, and his wife Alexandra, arrested for espionage in July). After his return, he is quoted as stating, "I am an American, happy to be home; but in many ways I am almost a stranger." In 1965, he began working and lecturing at the John XXIII Center at Fordham University (now the Center for Eastern Christian Studies at the University of Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania), counseling and offering spiritual direction to those who visited him, until his death.

On December 8, 1984, Ciszek died after many years of declining health, and was buried at the Jesuit Cemetery in Wernersville, Pennsylvania.

Legacy

Nine audio tapes of interviews conducted with Ciszek (ca. 1964) remain at Georgetown University.

In 1985, a Carmelite nun, Mother Marija, who was the mother superior of a Ruthenian Rite Carmelite monastery which Fr. Ciszek helped found, and formerly under his spiritual direction, began to petition for official recognition of Fr. Ciszek and his work within the Catholic Church. In 1990, Bishop Michael J. Dudick of the Eparchy of Passaic, New Jersey, opened an official diocesan process of investigation for official recognition on the road to beatification, a step toward possible canonization as a saint. His case is currently being handled by the Diocese of Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Ciszek Hall at Fordham University in New York City is named after Fr. Ciszek. It currently houses Jesuit scholastics in the first stage of formal study for the priesthood. Additionally, a small room has been set aside in honor of Fr. Ciszek. It contains the (Latin) altar, sacred vessels, candle sticks, and crucifix Fr. Ciszek used, as well as a copy (in his own hand) of his final vows and a photocopy of a letter to a friend containing spiritual advice. There is also a Ciszek Hall at the University of Scranton. Shenandoah, Pennsylvania also commemorated his legacy by the founding of a Catholic elementary school named Father Walter J. Ciszek School, later renamed Trinity Academy at the Father Walter J. Ciszek Education Center.

Quotes

Books