History

A Catholic History of Warsaw

Warsaw was a Mazovian ducal town until King Sigismund III Vasa moved the court from Kraków in 1596, and the orders that came with the court filled it with churches. It became a diocese only in 1798. Under Russian rule the clergy closed every church in protest in 1861, and Archbishop Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński was exiled for twenty years. Saint Faustina entered her convent here in 1925. After the Uprising of 1944 German units razed most of the city, and the churches were rebuilt under Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. Warsaw then became the place where the Church faced communism, from Saint John Paul II's Mass of 1979 to the murder of Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko in 1984, and in 2016 it opened the Temple of Divine Providence.

Before 1300

Mazovian Strongholds and Two Old Dioceses

Warsaw began as a group of strongholds and villages on both banks of the Vistula. Archaeologists place a stronghold at Old Bródno on the right bank from the ninth or tenth to the eleventh century, and Solec, on the left bank, was a salt port by the twelfth century. The first written mention of Warsaw is in an act of the Bishop of Poznań from 1251.

Church life came from two older dioceses. The left bank, where the Old Town grew, belonged to Poznań, and the right bank, with Praga, the district across the river, and Bródno, belonged to Płock until 1800. Almost nothing from this age can be seen, but the division still shows. Since 1992 the right bank has been a separate diocese, Warsaw-Praga, with the cathedral of Saint Michael and Saint Florian.

Cathedral Basilica of Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Florian the Martyr

Sources(36)

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