Friar Łucjan KRÓLIKOWSKI, the oldest friar in the Order, and a member of the Province of Our Lady of the Angels in the USA, was called by Sister Death on the morning of October 11, 2019, in Enfield, Connecticut. He was 100 years old.

Friar Łucjan was born in Nowe Kramsko, Poland. He entered the Order in 1934, in Niepokalanów where he met St. Maximilian Kolbe. He was deported to a communist concentration camp in Siberia during World War II, and after liberation, walked to Beirut, Lebanon, where he was ordained in 1946. He joined the Polish army, and was stationed in East Africa to serve the needs of Polish exiles living there, especially Polish orphans.
After World War II, he arranged for many of those orphans to be resettled in Montreal, Canada. This story was recounted in a book he wrote entitled “Stolen Childhood.” Friar Łucjan served for eight years at the Parish of Our Lady of Częstochowa in Montreal. After this, he was stationed in Buffalo, New York, where he worked in the radio apostolate. In his later years, he lived and worked at St. Stanislaus Parish in Chicopee, Massachusetts until he was transferred to the infirmary of the Felician Sisters in Enfield, Connecticut, where he continued to exercise his ministry as a confessor. In September of this year, the President of Poland honored Friar Łucjan on the occasion of his 100th birthday. May the Lord grant him peace.

Friar Jude WINKLER