(LifeSiteNews) – This week, former President Donald Trump published a tribute to a Polish priest martyred by a Communist regime.

On October 16, Trump posted the following message on Facebook:

This Saturday, October 19, 2024, is the 40th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, a truly great Catholic priest, who was the source of tremendous spiritual strength for the Polish Solidarity Movement and, indeed, the entire nation of Poland, in the 1980s. Yesterday, in Chicago, I was honored to sign a Commemoration about this solemn anniversary and present it to Father Jerzy’s nephew, Marek Popiełuszko, as well as receive from him a book of Father Jerzy’s sermons and other beautiful mementos to remember the life of this extraordinary man of heroic virtue.

This Saturday, October 19, 2024, is the 40th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, a truly great Catholic priest, who was the source of tremendous spiritual strength for the Polish Solidarity Movement and, indeed, the entire nation of Poland, in the 1980s.… pic.twitter.com/9HIFtRQbka

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2024

It is easy to assume that Trump was playing to Polish American voters by publishing this message. After all, he made a big hit during his 2017 visit to Warsaw with a stirring speech that touched on Polish heroism in front of the Warsaw Uprising monument in Krasinski Square:

I am here today not just to visit an old ally, but to hold it up as an example for others who seek freedom and who wish to summon the courage and the will to defend our civilization. The story of Poland is the story of a people who have never lost hope, who have never been broken, and who have never, ever forgotten who they are …

Through four decades of communist rule, Poland and the other captive nations of Europe endured a brutal campaign to demolish freedom, your faith, your laws, your history, your identity — indeed the very essence of your culture and your humanity. Yet, through it all, you never lost that spirit. Your oppressors tried to break you, but Poland could not be broken …

You were supported in that victory over communism by a strong alliance of free nations in the West that defied tyranny. Now, among the most committed members of the NATO Alliance, Poland has resumed its place as a leading nation of a Europe that is strong, whole, and free.

That was a good speech, and just like Trump’s Facebook post, it was too true to be mere flattery.

At the same time, the Warsaw speech was very much of 2017, a few years before Joe Biden became the U.S. president and a few more before Donald Tusk and his liberal-left coalition took power in Poland. After all, it suggested that the bad old days in Poland were gone forever. However, the very recent news that Warsaw’s left-wing mayor has banned Polish patriots’ annual Independence Day march is a reminder that good times do not last and campaigns to demolish freedom and faith return.

Freedom and faith go together, and this is exemplified in the life of Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko (1947-1984), who was murdered by the Polish so-called Security Service (Służba Bezpieczeństwa), which is to say, secret police, at age 37. This was the last, but not the first, outrage perpetrated by the People’s Republic upon the Catholic priest. In 1966, after his first year in seminary, he was conscripted and sent to a special unit of the army whose object was to ruin vocations.

“Popieluszko did not let himself be broken,” journalist Mirosław Sochacki wrote. “He initiated resistance and kept his colleagues’ spirits up although he faced ruthless punishments for this: ridicule, many hours of exercises, crawling in the cold, cleaning the toilet in a gas mask. The journalist Mirosław Sochackimilitary devastated him physically. At the beginning of 1970, after he had already returned to the seminary, he fell seriously ill and was almost miraculously saved. Health problems followed him for the rest of his life.”

Blessed Jerzy was ordained a priest in 1972 by Blessed Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, who was himself a survivor of Communist harassment and imprisonment. Popiełuszko served as a parish priest in the Archdiocese of Warsaw as long as his damaged health permitted. When it failed, he worked with students and then as a chaplain to health workers. Then, in 1980, Cardinal Wyszyński asked him to celebrate Mass for strikers at the Warsaw Steelworks, and Fr. Popiełuszko became an active supporter of, and chaplain to, the Solidarity (Solidarność) independent trade union. Although it was illegal, at its height Solidarity had 10 million members.

Martial law was declared on December 13, 1981. There followed a frightening time of sudden arrests and imprisonment without trial, food shortages, censorship, wiretapping and police violence. The one place people could feel truly free — and indeed were allowed to assemble — was at Mass. Fr. Popiełuszko kept up his activities supporting Solidarity, which included assisting people on trial, distributing charitable donations from the West, and giving sermons critical of the government. These were not rants but deeply theological in nature. They included the teachings of both Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Wyszyński, and often included a verse from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good” (Romans 12:21). These homilies were broadcast by Radio Free Europe and so reached homes throughout Poland. The young priest thus became a spiritual guide for millions, a national hero, and a prime target for the communist regime. On October 19, 1984, he was kidnapped by four members of the secret police and beaten to death. They then threw his body in the Vistula River.

Poles were outraged, and it must have seemed expedient for the regime to distance itself from the murder, for his killers, led by Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, were soon arrested and put on trial for doing what they were presumably ordered to do. According to Time magazine, the prosecutor demanded the death penalty for Piotrowski and 25-year prison sentences for his accomplices. (This never happened: they were all released in a subsequent amnesty.) He also — staggeringly — condemned Popiełuszko.

“Father Popiełuszko was filled with hatred for socialist Poland,” state prosecutor Leszek Pietrasinski claimed. “They (the defendants) were extremists just as he (Popiełuszko) was an extremist. Thus, two extremist attitudes met.”

It doesn’t say much for a regime when it equates an innocent man who did nothing but live for others to the federal investigators who beat him to death. Fortunately, that regime collapsed five years later, thanks in part to the faithfulness of such Catholic clergy as Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Wysziński, Fr. Popiełuszko, and, indeed, of the majority of the Polish people.

Because here’s the thing: Even though the Catholic Church in Poland stood up against the Communists, the Communists never attempted to squelch the Church once and for all. Yes, there was fierce persecution of the Church from 1947 to 1953, with executions, imprisonments, and confiscations, but the Mass itself was never outlawed, as it had been in Elizabeth England. I can only assume that this was because the authorities, however little they admitted it, were terrified of the millions of Catholics under their control and knew that they could not go too far against their faith. Murdering Fr. Popiełuszko, they soon discovered, was a step too far.

There’s a lesson for all of us in that. It’s something to think about today, on the 40^th anniversary of Blessed Jerzy’s triumphant entrance into heaven. Do we in the English-speaking countries have the faith that would stand up to an oppressive communist — or, shall we say, Marxist — regime? Let’s hope we don’t find out.