Father Casimir Wyszynski

60 Z YGMUNT P ROCZEK , MIC, P H D practices, but failed to come up with anything. As the Lord God brought me happily to Rome, I submitted a petition on thismatter to the Holy Father. In 1752, I was granted an audience. When I met with some religious from Poland, I asked them if these im- proprieties had been stopped in Polish parishes, or if the dioceses had issued a ban on suchworks. They replied that they had heard nothing on thismatter and that people continued towork as they did before and had to work while waiting for confession and Easter Communion. In 1753, I submitted to the Holy Father the following petition: “Holy Father! This is to inform Your Holiness most humbly, that certain malpractices have been established in the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by many reverend parish pastors, their vicars and rectors of parish churches in connection with the Church commandment about Easter Confession and Holy Communion. Many times when the faithful, very poor people, bothmen andwomen, come from their villages to the parish church, wishing to satisfy this command- ment, they receive an unduly heavy duty, even impossible to ful- fill, to work either in the houses or farms or gardens belonging to the parish pastor prior to being admitted to Confession and Holy Communion. It so happens frequently that some of those people, being spent in such works, can hardly make a sincere Confession and receive Holy Communion with proper deference. What is even worse, due to the delay in administering Communion, since the aforesaid works stretch well into midday and even later, these poor wretches who have been fasting from the day before and who have become worn out by additional work, become weak- ened and sick, it is only with a great effort that they are able to receive Communion. Because of illnesses resulting from their hard toil, they complain and lament with bitterness and they say to themselves—especially the country bumpkins—that such a commandment must have been issued not for purification from sins in the sacrament of penance and pious reception of the Body of Christ, but only to profit greedy priests. In a word, it is difficult to express the strain put on visiting confessors when they hear confessions; and how much harm is done to the poor people by