„Budowniczy mostów” – kard. Ignacy Jeż (1914-2007)

Ignacy Jeż was born to Jan and Jadwiga, nee Liszkowska, on 31 July 1914 in Radomyśl Wielki. After graduating from secondary school in 1932, he began his studies at the Silesian Theological Seminary in Krakow. After ordination (1937), he worked as a curate in Hajduki Wielkie (the then parish priest, Rev. Józef Czempiel, was beatified in 1999) and served as chaplain of the men’s unit of the Polish Scouting Association in Świętochłowice (1938-1939). In 1942, he was arrested by the Gestapo and transported to the Dachau concentration camp, where he stayed until his liberation (1945). For another year, he served as a priest in temporary camps involved in organizing the transport to Poland of Poles who had been forced to work in Germany in Plohingen and then in Göppingen. After returning to Poland (1946), he worked as a temporary administrator, curate, catechist in gymnasium and boarding school, rector and director of the Minor Seminary and vice-rector of the Major Seminary, running the Preliminary Department of the Seminary in Tarnowskie Góry. In the meantime, he collaborated with the Catholic weekly magazine Gość Niedzielny, and – as a diocesan moderator of the Marian Sodality of Young Man (1946) – with the journal of the Marian Sodality Nasza Droga. He served the Church in Western Pomerania and the Lubusz region for 12 years as the auxiliary bishop of Gniezno, working alongside Bishop Pluta in Gorzów Wielkopolski (1960), and then as the auxiliary bishop of Gorzów (1967). Having been appointed diocesan bishop of the newly created Koszalin and Kołobrzeg diocese (1972), he created diocesan structures, initiated pastoral activities and supervised the internal life of the faithful of the Koszalin Church. He died on 16 October 2007 in Rome, on the eve of the solemn proclamation of him as a cardinal.