Roman Sitko

Roman Sitko was born on 30 March 1880 in the village of Czarna Sędziszowska in Galicia, then a crown land of Austria-Hungary and today in southeastern Poland. He was formed for the diocesan priesthood in the Diocese of Tarnów and ordained a priest in 1904. His early ministry was that of a secular (diocesan) priest rather than a member of a religious order: parish work and catechesis among the Polish Catholic population of the region. After the restoration of Polish independence he continued to serve the same diocese in the interwar years.

Sitko was later assigned to the major seminary in Tarnów, where he taught and helped form candidates for the priesthood. In 1936 he became rector of that seminary, overseeing its spiritual life, discipline, and studies. The Tarnów seminary was a principal center of priestly formation in southern Poland, and the rectorate placed him among the leading clergy of the diocese on the eve of the Second World War. He remained a celibate diocesan priest throughout his life and is not recorded as having married or had children.

The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 brought the Tarnów area under Nazi occupation. Occupation policy treated the Polish Catholic clergy as a pillar of national identity and a target for repression. Sitko continued his duties as long as he could. The Gestapo arrested him on 22 May 1941. He was held in prison in Tarnów and in 1942 was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, to which many Polish priests were sent.

At Auschwitz he was subjected to starvation, forced labor, and the camp’s regime of brutality. He died there on 12 October 1942. Like most prisoners who perished in that camp, he has no known grave. On 13 June 1999, in Warsaw, Pope John Paul II beatified 108 Polish victims of Nazi persecution, among them Sitko; the group is known as the 108 Martyrs of World War II. Their collective liturgical memorial is 12 June. Sitko has not been canonized. He is venerated as a blessed martyr of the Catholic Church, especially in the Diocese of Tarnów and in commemorations of the Polish clergy killed during the occupation.