Cardinal Józef Glemp – Primate of Poland, Metropolitan of Warsaw

Metropolitan of Warsaw Cardinal Józef Glemp was born on 18 December 1929 in Inowrocław, in the region of Kujawy, into a worker’s family. In the period 1950-56 studied in the Primatial Seminary in Gniezno and Poznań. Ordained to the priesthood on 25 May 1956 by Bishop Franciszek Jedwabski, in the period 1958-64 he studied canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. On returning to Poland, until 1967, he was a secretary at the Primatial Seminary in Gniezno.

From 1967 until 1979 he was a clerk at the Secretariat of the Primate of Poland in Warsaw and the secretary to and the closest collaborator of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. On 4 March 1979 Pope John Paul II appointed him the Bishop of Warmia. He was ordained bishop on 21 April 1979 in Gniezno by Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. On 7 July 1981, after the death of Cardinal Wyszyński, he was named Metropolitan Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw and the Primate of Poland. Since that year until 2004 he presided over the Conference of the Polish Episcopate. He assumed authority in both archdioceses in accordance with canon law on 9 July 1981. On 2 February 1983 he received a cardinalitial biretta from John Paul II. He led the Polish Church in the difficult period of martial law, proclaimed on 13 December 1981 by the communist regime with a view to suppressing the drive for independence within Polish society, as well as in the period of systemic transformation after 1989 and the normalisation of the life of the Church, when she returned to the areas she had been rejected from during the communist dictatorship.

On 25 March 1992 he ceased to carry out the function of the Archbishop of Gniezno, remaining the Metropolitan of Warsaw and the Primate of Poland, with the attendant title of the custodian of St. Adalbert’s relics in Gniezno.

aw, KAI //mam