With God in Russia

Born in Pennsylvania in 1904, the son of Polish immigrants, Walter Ciszek entered the Jesuit novitiate at Poughkeepsie, New York in 1928 and volunteered to work in Russia after his ordination in 1937.

In Ciszek’s time religious rights and freedoms in Russia were persecuted under the laws of the Soviet Union, which had been established only twelve years before. Pope Pius XI made an appeal for missionaries to travel to Russia. Excited by the challenge, Ciszek resolved to go, and so in 1934 he was sent to Rome, where he studied at the Pontifical Russian College. He was ordained in 1937 and travelled to a Jesuit mission in eastern Poland, as no priest could enter directly into Russia.

This mission was forced to close the following year, however, with the outbreak of the Second World War. Noting the streams of exiles heading east, Ciszek arranged to cross over the Russian border under an assumed name and, together with two other Jesuits, travelled by train to the Ural Mountains. There, in the town of Chusovoy, Ciszek worked as a logger and secretly celebrated Mass for those there who desired it. In 1941 he was arrested and sent to Lubyanka prison in Moscow, accused of espionage on behalf of the Vatican. Here he was routinely interrogated and tortured for months, before he finally gave in upon threat of his life and signed a false confession created by the authorities. Declared guilty of espionage, he was sentenced to fifteen years labour in Siberia. However he would remain at Lubyanka for another four years, mostly in solitary confinement.

In 1946 Ciszek travelled by train and boat to a gulag at Norilsk, where he worked in construction and coal mining, relentless and taxing work. Some relief came from being able to celebrate Mass and hear the confessions of his fellow inmates. The horrors of life in the Gulag were Walter Ciszek’s day-to-day experience for more than two decades. Ciszek never let the oppression and persecution to which he was subjected dull his missionary work.

Finally, in 1955, having received three years off his sentence for surpassing work quotas, Ciszek was released; however given his apparent crime he was confined to the city of Norilsk and the KGB continued to keep tabs on him. He was allowed to write to his sister in America, letting his family know he was alive long after they gave up hope of his returning.

Working in a chemical factory, Ciszek continued to say Mass to an ever growing congregation until the authorities stepped in and told him he was to leave the city and never come back. In Krasnoyarsk he established missionary parishes until the KGB discovered this too and moved him again. He ended up in Abakan where he got a job as a mechanic and worked for four more years. In 1963 he received a letter from his sister who had obtained a visa to come to Moscow to see him. He was overjoyed but waited and waited and nothing came of it. Months later he was taken to Moscow, where he was introduced to a man from the American consulate. Papers were signed and Ciszek was put on a plane for America. He had been traded along with another in exchange for two Soviet

Back in America after those decades of imprisonment, Ciszek slowly built a new life for himself; in 1965 he began teaching at Fordham University in Pennsylvania. He wrote two books about his years in Russia, With God in Russia and He Leadeth Me. After years of declining health he died in 1984. His cause was soon put forward for consideration of beatification as part of the process to become a saint. He is now named Servant of God. Ciszek Hall at Fordham University in New York City is named after him.

From www.jesuit.ie/inspirationaljesuits, with permission.