Stanisław Pyrtek

Stanisław Pyrtek was a Polish Roman Catholic diocesan priest of the Diocese of Przemyśl and one of the martyrs of the German occupation of Poland during the Second World War. He was born on 21 March 1913 in the village of Korczyna, in the Krosno region of Galicia, then under Austro-Hungarian rule and today in southeastern Poland. He came from a Catholic farming family, completed his schooling in the region, and entered the major seminary at Przemyśl. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1938 and began his ministry as a parish vicar.

In the first years of his priesthood Poland was invaded and occupied. Like many young clergy he continued pastoral work under conditions of terror, serving as vicar in Nowy Żmigród. The occupying authorities regarded the Polish Catholic priesthood as a support of national identity and a potential focus of resistance; thousands of priests were arrested, deported to concentration camps, or shot. Father Pyrtek was arrested by the Gestapo on 29 October 1941 and held in prison for many months.

On 4 August 1942 he was executed by firing squad in Nowy Sącz. He was twenty-nine years old. His death belongs to the wider wartime destruction of the Polish Church, in which bishops, diocesan and religious priests, and lay Catholics were killed in prisons, forests, and camps.

Pope John Paul II beatified him in Warsaw on 13 June 1999 together with 107 other Polish victims of that persecution, the group known as the 108 Martyrs of World War II. Their liturgical memorial is kept on 12 June. Pyrtek is remembered as a young diocesan priest who remained faithful to his ministry until death under a totalitarian occupation.