A visit to Fr Tadeusz Styczen SDS in Lublin

Ali with Fr Tadeusz Styczen SDS at Lublin 

Tues 25 Sept 2007:  The previous day we had travelled the 200 miles from Czestochowa to Lublin for one reason - to visit a dear friend of ours: Fr Tadeusz Styczen, S.D.S.  There are some people whose presence in our lives seems to be truly Providential, not just a happy accident.

I first met Fr Tadeusz at a conference for European legislators at the Vatican in October 1998.  Ali and I had  been concerned about how a passage (n. 73) from Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (On the Gospel of life) was being interpreted.  It seemed to many people that it was endorsing so-called "imperfect legislation" to prohibit some abortions while allowing others, if that was all that could be achieved at a particular moment in time.  Ali believed that it would be wrong to support such "imperfect legislation"  and I thought that the passage did not necessarily teach what others claimed it did.

The conference discussed many topics, though "imperfect legislation" was not among them.  I was therefore surprised to hear a Polish priest, who was unknown to me, raise this very question in a discussion period at the end of the first session.   He was expressing the same sorts of concerns that Ali and I had, and as very few people shared our view I was very interested to meet and talk with him.  We spoke several times during the conference and during the following days while I stayed in Rome.

I did not realise for some time just how distinguished my new Polish friend was.  He was the Chair of Ethics at the John Paul II Insitute at the Catholic University of Lublin.  The previous occupant of the Chair had been Karol Wojtyla - who remained in that position until he was elected Pope John Paul II in 1978.  The future Pope had supervised the theses for  Fr Tadeusz Styczen's Masters and doctoral degrees.  According to one papal biographer:  "To the extent that Wojtyla had a protege, Father Styczen was the only one."  (Tad Szulc,  Pope John Paul II - The Biography (1995) p. 209).  Fr Tadeusz was a very close friend of Pope John Paul II, vacationing with him, having daily access to him when he was in Rome, and was with him when he died.

Fr Tadeusz Stczyen SDS

Ali was not with me in Rome when I met Fr Tadeusz, and he was very interested in hearing about her. He had a particular sympathy with the suffering this issue had caused Ali as it was an issue of particular concern for him too.  They were not to meet until 2005, on his first and only visit to England, and it was a great joy for both of us to visit him in Lublin.  He was at that time retired and not in good health, and we suspected we might not see him again.  Fr Tadeusz died on 14 October 2010.

The Catholic University of Lublin (KUL)

Ali at Lublin castle

Ali at Lublin Castle

It was a great encouragement to Ali and me to know that Fr Tadeusz shared our concerns about the interpretation of Evangelium vitae, n. 73.  We contributed to volumes he edited on the question that were published by the Catholic University of Lublin in Polish and German.  Above and beyond this however, was a conviction that he was an exceptionally good and holy priest.  Ali thought he was saintly, which is perhaps not surprising given that he was the protege of a saintly pope.

25 Sept 2007:  Last visit with Fr Tadeusz Styczen SDS.