Męczennicy – werbiści z Pieniężna
Martyrs – the SVD-Missionaries of Pieniężno

Summary/Abstract: The twentieth century was a period of the greatest persecutions in the Catholic Church’s history. Millions of Christians were killed. No wonder then that for John Paul II the problem of persecution and martyrdom became one of the leading topics during the celebration of the Great Jubilee of 2000 years of Christianity. The Holy Father asked the whole Church to collect documents about the martyrs. His calls did not remain unnoticed. The episcopacies of many local churches prepared catalogues of their martyrs. Orders acted similarly. Canonisation processes of the martyrs began to take place at a largescale. Polish SVD-missionaries joined these processes, presenting their candidates, and Pieniężno become a blissful place for their promotion. Three rogatory processes were held here under the auspices of the Archbishops Metropolitans of the Warmia Diocese. Two nationwide processes took place in Włoclawek (1994) and Peplin (2011), which dealt with the martyrs who suffered death from the hands of Hitler’s henchmen, and one in Warmia (2011), comprising Warmia citizens (Poles and Germans) from the area of Mazury, Warmia and Powisle, who were martyred from the hands of the Eastern aggressor, that is the Red Army of the Stalin’s Russia.Incidentally, to the bunch of martyrs, not involved in any process of beatification, belong three former citizens of the Pieniężno municipality who, as missionaries, in 1943, were martyred in New Guinea at the hands of the Japanese.

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