Bishop Jan Olszańki, MIC 1919-2003 On February 23, the opening of the beatification process of Bishop Jan Olszanki, a member of the Congregation of Marian Fathers, was officially announced in the Kamieniec cathedral. Most of his sixty-year priestly ministry occurred during the period of communist persecution and repression and he remains in the memory of his fellow Catholics and countrymen a tireless defender of the Polish community and the faith of the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine. Bishop Jan Olszański was born on January 14, 1919, in the town of Hucisko, in the district of Brody, Poland (present-day Ukraine). In 1938, he graduated from the gymnasium in Brody. In the same year, he entered the seminary in Lviv, graduating in 1942. After receiving his priestly ordination that same year, he worked in the village of Kaczanówka. Later, the Archbishop of Lviv, Bolesław Twardowski, appointed Fr. Olszański the administrator of the parish in Gródek Podolski at the same time entrusting to him pastoral care of several neighboring parishes. After Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union, Fr. Jan Olszański moved to Lviv, where he performed his priestly duties as vicar in the cathedral and also at the Church of Our Lady of the Snows. After two years in Lviv, he returned to Gródek in Podolia, where he worked until 1959 when the communist authorities forbade him from carrying out his pastoral work. According to the accounts of witnesses, he traveled to the parishes entrusted to him disguised as a woman in order to be able to hear the confessions of the faithful. After a short period of time, the authorities lifted their restrictions on his pastoral work and he was permitted to continue his work publicly, this time in the remote village of Manikowce, where he worked until 1991. As one of the few Catholic priests in the area, he tried to provide pastoral care to the faithful in his territory, covering almost half of today’s Kamieniec-Podolski Diocese, at the risk of his possible deportation or execution. For thirty-two years, from 1959 to 1991, Jan Olszański was an ordinary parish priest. Fr. Jan did not leave the Podole region, even though he had the opportunity to return to his home diocese. Manikowce became his escape – a small village in the Chmielnik region, where, “you did not wait for the parish priest or know what to do with him”, as Stanisław Nahorniak recalls. However, he was an extraordinary pastor because hundreds of people came to Manikowiec to confess, receive the Sacraments and hear the Word of God. In these difficult times, Fr.Jan understood well that the future of the Church lies in children and young people. He prepared them for the Sacraments, taught prayer, led Adoration, and even helped teach mathematics. His pockets were always full of sweets for the children in his Catechism classes and despite the hardships he endured and the difficulty of the times, he never complained, but prayed and worked for his
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