Luczycki, Zdzislaw, Ret. Rev. Msgr.
(Oct. 9, 1858 - Jun. 13, 1927)Throughout his life, controversies surrounded Father Zdzislaw Luczycki. No one who has looked into them found that he did not exactly endear himself to his higher ups and public officials. He was born in the remote farming village of Berejow, not far from Lublin, the largest city in east-central Poland, the son of Aleksander and Marianna Luczycki (with a slash across the first letter), and attended high school (gymnasium) in Siedlce, the largest city in Podlasie. When he was 18 years old, he was admitted to a seminary in Lublin and was ordained to the priesthood in 1881.
He was a curate at Kijany, Chodi, Labunie, and Zamosc, and within a year or so at each one he was kicked out. During the partitions of Poland in the eighteenth century, Russia took over Zamosc, a quiet town in Malopolska, and abolished the Uniate churches. The Uniates themselves, also known as Greek Catholics, remained in Zamosc. Father Luczycki was friendly with them but was forbidden to take care of their religious needs. He was arrested in 1884 for breaking the law and sentenced to four years of house arrest at the monastery in Wysokie Kolo. The following year he escaped from there and made his way either to Rome, Italy, or Chicago, Illinois. The two places were probably tied together.
On September 2, 1886, he was coupled to the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Virgin parish in Manitowoc, the fifth Polish parish in Wisconsin, and found there a steadily growing number of Polish immigrants. The Polish church was too small. The parishioners, after their hard day's work, dug a foundation for a larger church, and Father Luczycki sent people to stand in front of Polish churches in Chicago on Sundays to solicit money for construction of the upper part of the church. Eight years went by before the church was completed. Another priest, however, took Father Luczycki's place on Sept. 29, 1890.
In the meantime, he dabbled in a number of other projects. On December 27, 1886, after approval came from Bishop Michael Heiss of Milwaukee, he issued Wszytko Przez Serce Jezusa i Maryi (All Through the Heart of Jesus and Mary), a 16-page religious weekly 9 X 6 inches, and sold subscriptions to it at $1.50 a year. Most of its readers worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Whether Father Luczycki was the editor and publisher is not certain. The first editorial office was located at Chicago in the name of Konstanty Putrament and was transferred to Manitowoc on April 21, 1887, when W. Tarnowski was listed as editor. For a while, in September of the same year, the editorial, printing and publishing offices were at the Polish Seminary in Detroit, Michigan.
Actually, beginning in 1888, Father Luczycki used donations from Poles in the United States, income from the Catholic weekly newspaper, and loans to build St. Mary's home for the aged and orphans quite a distance from his parish. He also built a chapel next to it under the name of Nativity of the Mother of God. On May 24, 1889, he deeded the buildings to the Felician Sisters, who staffed the home for the aged, crippled and orphans, and devoted a lot of space in future issues of the weekly newspaper to their affairs. The last issue of the Catholic weekly, now larger in size and littered with illustrations and news, was published on December 29, 1890.
Without an explanation, Father Luczycki changed the name of the religious weekly to Dzwon Najslodszego Serca Jezusa i Maryi (the Bell for short) and sold it on March 21, 1892, to John Karchut, who owned the Polish bookstore in Manitowoc, but continued to print the newspaper in his shop. At the same time Father Luczycki, who had installed new printing presses in his printery, agreed to print another newspaper that Karchut had in mind. Gosc (The Visitor), beginning April 17, 1892. By July, the deal feel apart. Karchut moved to Milwaukee, where he issued a few issues of Gosc, and dropped out of sight. On October 13, 1892, Father Luczycki began a publication of the same name. As he grew in importance, a few critics, as is typical of ignorant people, accused him of pocketing a lot of the money that people sent for his charities in Manitowoc. Despite the fact that he reported the amount of money he received and the names of the benefactors, St. Mary's Home was better off than his publishing enterprises. No one suffered more from loss of newspaper subscribers and buyers of Polish books than Father Luczycki.
On January 15, 1894, after seven years of hard work in Wisconsin, including the organization of Sacred Heart parish in Two Rivers, seven miles to the north, another in the village of Northeim, seven miles to the south, and a history of the Poles in the United States, he notified his readers that he was worn out and said goodbye. Father Marcin Mozejewski, then in his late 60s, tried to salvage the Polish bookstore and Luczycki's printery, but found it too much for his advanced age. He returned it all to Father Luczycki. The priest from Berejow begged for help again. None came. On May 31, 1894, the Manitowoc Pilot, a weekly newspaper, reported that Father Luczycki closed his printing office, opposite the orphanage, and returned to Poland. Shortly afterwards, all he had left of his business, including a new press and countless books, were taken over by his creditors. The Polish books were hard to sell and years later, when the chaplain's house was razed, they were found in the insulation of the outside walls. Newspapers and other printed matter were burned. No records of subscribers and students of his seminary were kept.
Little is known of his activities in Poland when he returned for a short time in the 1890s, except that he stayed in the Austrian zone and thus evaded capture, and in other places when he fled in 1909, after breaking another law, and remained in hiding until 1918. In between, in 1902, he returned to Two Rivers, Wisconsin, where he had organized the Polish parish on March 10, 1889, and in his spare time he wrote articles on various subjects, entirely different from his writings in the newspapers, and published them in a 64 page booklet, entitled Biblioteczka Rodzinna (The Family Library). The first issue of the weekly periodical appeared on the first day of 1903. No one has found where and by whom Biblioteczka Rodzinna was printed. He arranged with the Felician Sisters at St. Mary's Home to handle the mailing and other details. No more than 17 issues were found. It meant that Father Luczycki was probably tied up in Wisconsin until the end of April and then showed up in the rectory of Sacred Heart R.C. Church in New Britain, Connecticut, where Father Lucian Bojnowski was pastor. Shortly after, whether he was Father Bojnowski's curate or a visitor, Bishop Michael Tierney of Hartford sent him to organize the Holy Name of Jesus parish for the Polish people in Stamford, Connecticut, forty miles from New York City. It was incorporated July 19, 1903. The church, including living quarters for the pastor and classrooms for a school, wasn't completed until 1905. Because he sold bonds illegally to pull the parish out of financial difficulties, Bishop Tierney removed Luczycki from the pastorale on April 30, 1906.
To the outcast of Stamford the world looked gloomy. He had no money. No family. No parish. For awhile he thought of following in the footsteps of Bishop Stefan Kaminski of a few independent Polish parishes, whom he expelled from his short-lived seminary in Manitowoc, and he wasn't ready to make a dramatic change in his life. Father Bojnowski was his friend and for friendship's sake he stayed in the fold. As he waited, he was able somehow to get the sentence he received in 1885 revoked. He went to Lublin, where Czarist authorities confiscated and closed institutions of higher learning, museums, and palaces of Polish royalty after the November Uprising of 1831, and where, in 1907, the Catholic archbishop gave him an assistant pastor's position in Lubartow, 25 km north of Lublin. Two other appointments were made in short order, one as a curate in Milesz and the other as an administrator of a parish in Jozefow, both of which were closer to Lublin than Lubartow. In 1909, his outside activities at Jozefow got him into trouble again with Russian authorities and he ran away again. The time in his life between 1909 and 1918 is blank.
When Russian occupation of Poland ended after the First World War, Father Luczycki was appointed pastor of a R.C. parish at Bochotnica Kol., west of Lublin, where he built a home on a beautiful hill for aged and sick priests. For the first time in his life, Franciszek German and Zygmunt Zielinski, who looked into his file in the archdiocesan archives at Lublin at a time that Polish and Jewish Communists were in power in Poland, noted that Luczycki held anti-Semitic and fascist ideas. How long he hated Jews is uncertain. One imagines that he dealt with them throughout his life. The researchers found a brochure that Luczycki wrote in the 1920s that inspired anti-Jewish demonstrations in Naleczow, Kazimierz Dolny, and other towns where Jewish merchants and craftsmen lived in harmony with the rest of the population. Had Rome seen the brochure, one wonders whether the pope would have raised him to the rank of Right Rev. Monsignor in 1924. As it was, civil and church authorities called him to account for leading anti-Jewish demonstrations. He died in Bochotnica and was buried in Naleczow. During a trip to Poland, Father Bojnowski visited Luczycki's resting place and said a prayer for his old friend.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)
Luczycki, Rev. Zdzislaus (1858-1927)Civic leader, writer. Pastor of Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Manitowoc, Wis. In 1887 he founded Home for the Aged People and the Orphanage of the Sweetest Heart of Jesus and Mary in Manitowoc, Wis. To this orphanage added also a hospital and offered same to Felician Sisters. In 1893 he published a book: Album of the Poles in Milwaukee, Wis. This book together with the nonpublished writings of Father Luczycki helped later very much the Rev. Kruszka in his writing of "Historja Polska w Ameryce" (The Polish History in America), published in 1905.
From: "Who's Who in Polish America" by Rev. Francis Bolek, Editor-in-Chief; Harbinger House, New York, 1943
Luczycki, Zdzislaw (1858-1927) priest, publicist, editor and publisher, Polonia activist in the United States. Born on October 9 in Berejow in Lublin county, son of Aleksander and Marianna. After three years of study at the high-school in Siedlce, he took a job in the regional government. In 1876 he entered the Seminary in Lublin, and was ordained a priest in 1881. He was then an assistant-pastor in Kijany, Chodl (1881), Labunie (1882) and in Zamosc (1884) where he ran afoul of the local authorities because he served as a priest among the former Uniates, and for not obtaining a loyalty oath in Russian from recruits. He was sentenced to 4 years of house arrest at the monastery in Wysokie Kolo, but in 1885 he escaped to the United States instead. There, in the following year, he became pastor of the Polish parish in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where he established a Polish printing operation and published three weekly papers" "Wszystko przez Serce Jezusa i Marii" [All through the Heart of Jesus and Mary] (1886-90); "Dzwon" [Bell] (1891); and "Gosc" [Guest] (1992-4). He also published during 1887-90 the "Gazeta Polska w Nebrasce" [Polish Gazette in Nebraska], "a weekly for the people." The columns of these publications were full of his articles. The printing shop under his direction published religious books, handbooks for the Polish schools, and novels (among them works by Henryk Sienkiewicz in abridged and reworked versions). In 1894 he edited and published the first part of "Album opisowo-obrazkowy emigracji polskiej w Ameryce" [A word and picture album of the Polish emigration in America]. The income from these enterprises went to support activities in enlightenment, charity, and schooling. (Craft instruction and shops established by him in the parish). He was a friend of Fr. W. Kruszka, a historian of the Polish emigration in the United States, with whom he cooperated in writing the book "Historia polska w Ameryce" [Polish history in America].
In 1894 he returned to Poland for a short time. In 1898 he published in Krakow a handbook "Krotkie przygotowanie do spowiedzi i komunii sw." [A short preparation for confession and Holy Communion]. Then for unknown reasons he returned to the States in 1902 where from January 1, 1903 he established a publishing house in Manitowoc called "Biblioteka Rodzinna" [Family Library]. Losing a substantial sum of money on this enterprise he moved to Ne Britain, Connecticut in mid-1903. He managed to get the sentence passed on him in 1885 revoked and he returned to Lublin, but because he was not able to obtain a religious assignment, he was going to emigrate once again in 1907. Yet, that year he was given an assistant pastor's position in Lubartow, then in Milesz and Jozefow, where in 1908 he became administrator. But in 1909 he was again in dispute with the authorities and was forced to emigrate once again, returning in 1918. After a short stay "sine officio" [without office] he was given the parish in Bochotnica Koscielna near Naleczow. Here he began activities of an anti Semitic nature as organizer and director of the illegal Committee to Rid Naleczow and Area of Jews. To this task he wrote the brochure "Tabliczki, czyli Oznaki Czujni Polskiej celem oddzielenia polskiego chrzescijanskiego przemyslu, handlu i rzemiosla i wolnych zawodow od zydowskiego" [Tablets, or signs of the Aware Poles [?], to the purpose of separating Polish Christian industry, trade, craft and the independent professions from those of the Jews] (L. 1926). He was called to account by the civil and church authorities for organizing anti-Jewish demonstrations. He also propagated fascist ideas, which were expressed in the brochure "Jak ja wyobrazam sobie faszyzm polski" [How I imagine Polish fascism] (L. 1926). In July 1924 he was named a secret Papal Chamberlain. He died on June 13, 1927 in Bochotnica.
Sources: Zielinski, S. Bibliografia czasopism polskich za granica [a bibliography of Polish publications abroad] 1930-1934, Warsaw 1935; Slownik Pracownikow Ksiazki Polskiej [A Dictionary of Polish Book Workers], Warsaw Lodz 1972; Who's Who in Polish America; Haiman, M., Zjednoczenie Polskie Rzymsko Katolickie w Ameryce [The Polish Roman Catholic Union in America], Chicago 1948 (erroneous spelling of name as: Luczynski); Kruszka, W. Historia polska w Ameryce [Polish history in America], Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1905, V in passim; Nagiel, H., Dziennikarstwo polskie w Ameryce [Polish journalism in America] Chicago 1884 p. 84-5, 117, 121; Stec C., Pioneer Polish-American Publisher, "Polish American Studies" 1961 p. 65-83; Skrzypek J., Czasopisiemnictwo Polskie w Stanach Zjednoczonych Ameryki Pulnocnej pod koniec XIX wieku [Polish Periodicals in the United States of North America at the end of the 19th century] "Roczn. Hist. Czasopismiennctwa Pol." T. 3: 1963/4 part. 1, pp. 151, 163 (erroneous spelling of name as: Luczynski); Catalogus eccl. Et cleri dioec. Lublinensis 1919-27, Lublin; Lublin Archdiocese: records of the Archivist General, Personal files on Zdzislaw Luczycki 1881-1910. 1918-1927.
Authors: Franciszek German and Zygmunt Zielinski
From: Polski Slownik Biograficzny, Volume XVII, Polska Akademia Nauk, Wroclaw, Warszawa, Krakow; 1973, p. 517.
Translation: Peter J. Obst (2008)