First China-bound “fidei donum” priest from Poland is associated with PIME

Fr Czesław Jerzy Wojciechowski, who is getting ready to leave for Hong Kong, talks about his missionary vocation which began with a stay in Chad.

Rome (AsiaNews) – He is the first fidei donum priest from Poland bound for Hong Kong. Fr Czesław Jerzy Wojciechowski took his first steps as a missionary in Africa, but an old monk, who had been John Paul II’s confessor, told him that “China is better.” An encounter with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) and a bout of malaria did the rest. In late May Father Jerzy will end his term in Poland then he is off to New York to work on his English. By Christmas he should be in Hong Kong. Today he tells AsiaNews about fulfilling what he considers the prophecy of his mission.

I was born 36 years ago in Toruń, Poland, and I have been a priest since June 15, 1996. In my first parish job, in Chełmża’s Collegiate Cathedral, I was in charge of a Missionary Children group. And when in September 1997 I became vicar in Toruń’s Assumption Parish I kept in touch with it. At that time I was preparing myself to go to Chad where Mgr Charles Vandame sj, archbishop emeritus of N'Djamena, had invited me.

In July 1998 my bishop decided to send me to Rome to study at the Urbaniana University where I got my PhD five years later.

I lived near the PIME offices in the Collegio San Pietro. With my friends from Bangladesh or China I sometimes had a chance to talk to the priests from PIME. In November 2001 I went to Ducenta to pray at the burial place of the Blessed Paolo Manna, entrusting my future as a missionary in him.

By September 2003 I was already serving as a missionary in the Saint Mbaga Tuzinde Major Seminary in Sarh, Chad, where I was prefect of studies and taught liturgy, patrologia and Church history.

I knew that not far from there, in Yagoua, there was a PIME community. I decided then to write to Fr Fernando Galbiati, secretary general of the Pontifical Missionary Society, asking information about joining PIME because the solitary life in a mission was not enough for me.

The Vicar General, Fr Luigi Bonalumi, replied directly and followed my application for the past three years during which I waited for the final decision by my bishop.

In the meantime I went back to Poland because in Chad I got sick with malaria and had a gallbladder operation. Doctors in the tropical diseases ward advised me not to go back to Africa even though I left there a community I love very much.

The doctors suggest that it would be better for me to go to a country where there is no risk of malaria. China and Mongolia were among the countries ad gentes most mentioned. When Fr Luigi Bonalumi submitted my first request to my bishop, Andrzej Suski, he indicated three countries—Japan, Cambodia and China—where I could serve the Church with PIME.

My bishop chose China but he made me wait for 18 months. In the meantime I was appointed spiritual father to the National Centre for Missionary Training and put in charge of Warsaw’s Missionary Institute for the Laity. Here I started to learn Chinese with a woman refugee form China.

Last September I came into contact with the Asia as a participant to the 7th European-Catholic Conference on China in Triuggio (Italy), and then at the 1st Asian Missionary Congress in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Later, in company of the father vicar, I spent some beautiful days in PIME’s regional headquarters in Hong Kong. Here I met Father Doimo and other PIME priests.

My long waiting time came to an end on December 11 my diocesan bishop signed my leave.

But from hindsight I can see that it all began in 1998 when, with my friend Paweł, I went to Frascati (Italy) to visit an old Camaldolese monk from Poland who was in his nineties, Father Rostworowski, who had once been Karol Wojtyła’s confessor.

He asked me: “Where are you going to serve as a missionary?” “To Chad,” I said. And he told me: “I think it would better to serve the Church in China.”

I didn’t see anything prophetic about it until Divine Providence gave the answer, which for me is challenge that I must take on.

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First China-bound “fidei donum” priest from Poland is associated with PIME

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