This year, Sunday, October 30, ended the Mission Week, whose theme was the words taken from the Acts of the Apostles “You will be my witnesses”. On this special occasion, the John Paul II Foundation Chapter in Aulnay sous Bois invited, as part of meetings with an interesting person series, the missionary Fr Mateusz Dziedzic, to share his experiences from missionary activity during the Holy Mass.
Father Mateusz Dziedzic is a young priest of the diocese of Tarnów, who for many years worked on missions in the Central African Republic, and now for over a year he has been serving in the Polish and French community just outside Paris. During the meeting, he told us, among other things, about how his missionary vocation was born and what work in Africa looks like.
As he says about himself, immediately after his ordination he did not think about going on missions. At his second parish in Skrzyszowice near Tarnów, he had a missionary group under his care. During the weekly meetings, he read letters and missionary materials, watched films with children and young people and, in this way, as he says, not only he was making children and young people interested in missionary themes, but also himself. At the same time, Bishop Wiktor Skworc encouraged young priests to devote at least five years of priesthood to work in mission countries. A breakthrough moment for Fr. Mateusz was the death of John Paul II. Just when the Pope was dying and the world was “stopping”, he once again read a letter encouraging people to work on missions, written by the Bishop. At that moment, the letter appealed to him a lot. When John Paul II died, Fr Mateusz went with his friends to the funeral and there at the Pope’s coffin he promised that he would fulfill his will. He remembered the words when, in the Jubilee Year in Rome, the Pope said to the seminarians of Tarnów at that time: “Do not be afraid, the world needs you and do not be afraid to leave Poland to proclaim the Gospel, because the world needs priests”. Then, years ago, these words sunk inti the priest’s heart. On the day of the Pope’s funeral, it was these words that Fr Mateusz remembered. At the coffin of John Paul II he said – “I want to fulfill your will. I want to be a missionary.” Then he thought of the African continent. After returning to Poland, he felt fear and anxiety about not knowing the language, and with all that awaited him on missions in a foreign world, he fought with himself. Finally, in 2007, he decided to go on a mission, and the Bishop during a conversation told him that it would be the Central African Republic. He was sent to the Missionary Formation Center in Warsaw.
At some point in his missionary work, Fr Mateusz Dziedzic found himself in a great danger, which seriously threatened his life. He shared his testimony of these events with us during the Holy Mass.
We thank Fr Mateusz for his common prayer in our parish, for the Word of God and for his testimony of difficult and very dangerous missionary work. We wish many graces of God, through the intercession of St. John Paul II, strength and health for further service on the priestly and missionary path. God bless!
In the following days, the homily-testimony of Fr Mateusz Dziedzic will be published, about the events of those dramatic moments of his life while working on missions.
Text: Elżbieta Noster
Photo: Zbigniew Adamek
