On July 20-27, 2019, Friar Valerio FOLLI, OFM Conv., and Sister Renata FERRARI (Franciscan Sisters of St. Elizabeth) accompanied a group of young people from different Italian cities to spend a week visiting the places in Poland where our Blessed Martyrs of Peru, Friars Michał TOMASZEK Friar Zbigniew STRZAŁKOWSKI, had been born and brought up.
This experience in Poland was preceded in 2017, by a mission of young Italians who went to Peru to visit the places where the Martyrs served and shared their faith and lives with the local people. This youth-missionary animation project resulted from a joint effort by the Italian Province of St. Anthony (Northern Italy) and the Province of St. Anthony and Blessed James of Strepar in Poland (Cracow), assisted by the former Secretary General for the General Secretariat for Missionary Animation (SGAM), Friar Jarosław WYSOCZAŃSKI.
The participants visited the cities of Cracow, Rychwałd, Częstochowa and Kalwaria Pacławska. They also reflected on the great tragedy against humanity that took place at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. The goal of the trip was to learn about the reality in which the Blessed Martyrs lived and were formed and to show the Polish youth in Kalwaria how beautiful it is to bear witness to one’s faith in the Lord to the ends of the earth.
Friar Marian GOŁĄB, the Minister Provincial of Cracow, asked the young people if what they had experienced and learned in Peru was something personal or something that could be given, shared and returned. Thus, he laid down a challenge for all the young people who participated in this experience in Peru and Poland.
Friar Jarosław WYSOCZAŃSKI, former SGAM Secretary General
