Józef Glemp

Józef Glemp (18 December 192923 January 2013) was a Polish cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Warsaw from 1981 to 2006, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1983. He assumed the title of Primate of Poland following Stefan Wyszyński's death.

Biography

Early life and ordination

Józef Glemp was born in Inowrocław on 18 December 1929 as a son of Kazimierz Glemp and Salomea Kośmicka, and was baptized the same day. His father had participated in the Greater Poland Uprising from 1918 to 1919. Józef studied at the seminaries of Gniezno and Poznań, but his education was interrupted by the World War II; he and his siblings were slave laborers during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

After two years of pastoral service in Poznań, Glemp was sent to Rome in 1958 to study canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University, earning his doctorate in utroque iure in 1964,

Cardinal

Glemp was created Cardinal-Priest by John Paul II in the consistory of 2 February 1983 Weiss and the protesters were ejected after attempting to illegally scale a wall surrounding the convent.

Episcopal conference

Cardinal Glemp acted as President of the Episcopal Conference of Poland for 23 years, from 1981 until March 2004.

He was president delegate to the 1st Special Assembly for Europe of the Synod of Bishops (1991).

Glemp was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that selected Pope Benedict XVI.

Apostolic administrator

On 7 January 2007, it was announced that Cardinal Glemp would be acting as the Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Warsaw due to the resignation of Stanisław Wielgus. On 3 March 2007, Kazimierz Nycz was appointed to the Warsaw see.

Death

thumb|Tomb of Józef Glemp in [[St. John's Archcathedral (Warsaw)|St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw]]

Glemp died from lung cancer on 23 January 2013 in Warsaw at the age of 83. Funeral celebrations lasted three days, from 26 to 28 January 2013, and took place in three major churches of Warsaw. On Saturday, 26 January, the cardinal's body was lying in state in the Visitationist Church. On Sunday, the coffin was moved to the Church of the Holy Cross, where a Holy Mass was celebrated by Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the apostolic nuncio to Poland, with the sermon preached by Archbishop Józef Michalik, the head of the Polish Conference of Bishops. After the mass, a funeral procession took the coffin to St. John's Cathedral. The Monday, 28 January 2013 Funeral Mass was attended by president Bronisław Komorowski and his wife Anna, former president Lech Wałęsa, former prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, representatives from the judiciary, the Senate, and the Sejm, and other high-ranking officials from various institutions. Over a hundred prelates from Poland and abroad (among them, Prague's Cardinal Dominik Duka, Budapest's Cardinal Peter Erdo, Barcelona's Cardinal Lluis Martinez Sistach, Cologne's Cardinal Joachim Meisner, and Zagreb's Cardinal Josip Bozanić) concelebrated, with Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, the Archbishop of Kraków, presiding. The homily was given by the Archbishop of Gniezno, Józef Kowalczyk, the incumbent Primate of Poland. Afterwards, the late primate was entombed in a crypt of the cathedral.

Curial membership

Oriental Churches (congregation)

Wielgus affair

During the controversy surrounding the alleged collaboration of bishop Stanislaw Wielgus with the communist secret services, Cardinal Glemp said that the prelate was a true servant of God and that media accusations against him were unfounded or exaggerated.

1989 alcohol sermon

Glemp gave a homily in 1989 for which he faced criticism for years afterwards. In it, he suggested that Jews had spread alcoholism in Poland, and talked of Jewish control of the media. In 1991, Glemp wrote a letter to an American archbishop in which he expressed regret for the sermon, and said he recognized that it might have caused pain among Jews. During his visit to the United States later that year, Glemp met with a dozen Jewish leaders inside the residence of cardinal John O'Connor in New York while about 100 protestors demonstrated outside. In that meeting, Glemp and the Jewish leaders set up a program in which Jewish scholars would go to Poland and teach about the contributions and history of Jews in Poland.