Fr. Marian Brudzisz CSsR died in Tuchów on April 6, 2022, at 91 years. He spent 74 years in the Redemptorist Congregation and 67 years in the priesthood. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord…
The funeral Mass will be held on Saturday, April 9 2022, at 11.00 a.m. in the Sanctuary of Our Lady in Tuchow. The introduction of the body and the rosary will take place half an hour beforehand.
O. Marian Brudzisz was born on September 8, 1930 in Rożnowice (diocese of Tarnów) to parents Wojciech and Maria née Róż. He made his first religious profession on August 2, 1948, at Lomnica-Zdroj and his perpetual profession on August 2, 1953, at Tuchow. He was ordained a priest on June 19 1955, by Archbishop Włodzimierz Jasiński in Tuchów.
In the years 1956-60, he studied theology at the Catholic University of Lublin and Church history and a course in church archives. After completing these studies, he worked as a pastor in Zamość (1960-62). Afterwards, he was a teacher of history, geography, the science of Poland and the modern world, and biology in a secret junior high school in Braniewo and Łomnica-Zdrój (1962-65) and then also in Tuchów (1965-66).
After receiving his doctorate in history under the direction of Father Marian Rechowicz, in March 1967, he began lecturing on Church history at the Redemptorist Theological Seminary in Tuchow.
He also served as director of the seminary library with extraordinary commitment, which he reorganized (1967-85). From 1970-to 1980, he provided theological books for priests and lay Catholics in Czechoslovakia and participated in preparing candidates for the priesthood by organizing secret ordinations.
From 1987 to 89, he worked in the General Archives in Rome, and from 1989 to 2001, he was director of the Library of the Alphonsian Academy, which he modernized.
In 2002 he returned to Poland and settled in Krakow, where he continued his research into the history of the Congregation and the work of Redemptorists in the Polish community. He collaborated with the Institute of the History of the Redemptorist Congregation in Rome and with the “Catholic Encyclopedia”, as well as with the Research Centre for Polonia and Polonia Pastoral Care of the Catholic University of Lublin, which honoured him in 2016 with the prestigious Irena and Franciszek Skowyr Scientific Award. He has also collaborated with the “Polish Biographical Dictionary” and the “Dictionary of Polish Catholic Theologians”.
He was also instrumental in organizing and cataloguing the Archive of the Polish Catholic Mission in France (a work of several months completed in 2014). He is the author of numerous articles and encyclopaedic entries devoted to the Redemptorists and Polish emigration, especially in France, and several books.
He spent the last months of his life in Tuchów, where he died on April 6, 2022.
(www.redemptor.pl)
