Jan Chłosta The Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Gietrzwałd Gietrzwałd is located halfway between Ostróda and Olsztyn. It is situated just south of what use to be called Polish Warmia  (Ermland), surrounded by  low hillocks on the Giłwa River, the right tributary of the Pasłęka River. The settlement had the rights with the foundation charter which was issued by the Chapter of Warmia on 19 May 1352 This  happened a year before  the town of Olsztyn was established. Gietrzwałd was still a village.  At the beginning, on the hill descending smoothly to the river, a wooden chapel was erected. Father Jan (John) Sterchen carried out his ministry there. During the wars between Poland and the Teutonic Knights, the village and the chapel were destroyed.

.   In the 15th century, a shrine with no aisles was set up on the stone foundation. It was consecrated around 1500, under the invocation of the Nativity of Our Lady, by Auxiliary Bishop Jan Wilde.  The devotion to the Mother of God quickly became widely known in Gietrzwałd. It has survived to the present day.
 
    Southwards, on the brook, single cottages clustered, some are small, and others bigger. They were inhabited by pious Warmia Polish people, who came here from the district of Chełmno and Masovia. They mixed with the local Prussians. After wars and epidemics, these areas were populated by thrifty administrators of the Chapter, including Nicolaus Copernicus. “All were Catholics here,” wrote father Augustyn (Augustine) Weichsel, “apart from the gendarme and two men.” The parish was comprised of eight villages. Every Thursday, fairs were held.
 
    The church was reconstructed many times. The first time, a major repair was made as early as in the 16th century. In the period of baroque, the shrine was furnished with new altars. In mid-1790, Bishop Ignacy (Ignatius) Krasicki vested the church with two new titles:  St. John Apostle and Sts. Peter and Paul Apostles. Next, in the 19th century, the then parish priest Józef (Joseph) Jordan led an expansion of the church. He strengthened the foundation and walls. The shrine acquired the present shape of the Roman cross in the place of the previous rectangle immediately after the apparitions, when Augustyn Weichsel became the parish priest. It is also during this time that they demolish the wooden tower and erected a brick one with a gothic capping. The church roof was covered with roofing tiles and the tower with sheet metal.
 
    Since August 13 1945, guardians of the Gietrzwałd shrine have been Canons Regular of the Lateran from Cracow. It is thanks to them that the church yard has been renovated. Before the ceremonies of the centenary of the apparitions of Our Lady, the interior of the shrine was fully renovated. There was inter alia, new marble, put on the  floor and the previous shine of polychromy was restored.
 
    Development of the church in Gietrzwałd was always carried out carefully, without breaching the unique character of this temple. Although its area has been significantly  enlarged, nevertheless, a sober and regular scheme has been retained. The fittings have not been breached at all. The renovated old pictures and paintings facilitate the pilgrims who are coming here to pray and contemplate. Th An authentic modesty prevails here.  Above all, there is the icon  of Our Lady of Gietrzwałd in the form of the Nursing Madonna, holding the Infant Jesus in Her hand, dressed in a silver frock. The first reference to this icon dates back to the year 1568. Since then, it has been renovated many times over the years. Our Lady is blessing the Infant with her right hand while her left hand rests on a book; there are  two Angels over the Madonna’s crown, holding up a band with the Latin inscription: “AVE REGINA CÆLORUM AVE DOMINA ANGELORUM” (“Hail, Queen of Heaven, hail, Lady of Angels”).
 

Gietrzwałd has become famous due to the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. It took over pilgrims, after the monastery in Łąki Bratiańskie near Nowe Miasto on the Drwęca River, was closed in 1875. The figure of Our Lady, famous of graces, crowned in 1752, was there in 1876, as the Prussian authorities forbade worshippers from Pomerania to come to Łąki, they started to make pilgrimages to distant Gietrzwałd.

    The Gietrzwałd apparitions took place nineteen years after the Lourdes apparitions, and  lasted from June 27 to September 16 1877. The main visionaries were: thirteen year old Justyna  Szafryńska and twelve year old Barbara Samulowska. Both came from indigent Polish families. Our Lady spoke to them in Polish, which was emphasised by Father Franciszek Hipler, “in the language that is spoken in Poland.”
 
    In short, the course of apparitions was as follow: Our Lady appeared for the first time to Justyna when she was returning home with her mother after having taken an examination prior to receiving the First Holy Communion. The next day,  Barbara Samulowska also saw the ‘Bright Lady’ sitting on the throne with Infant Christ among Angels over the maple tree in front of the church while reciting the rosary. The girls asked “Who are you?” she answered, “I am the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception!”. “What do you require, Mother of God?”, they asked, the answer was: “I wish you recite the rosary everyday!”

    Later on, among many questions regarding health and salvation of various persons, the children also asked the following: “Will the Church in the Kingdom of Poland set free?” “Will the deserted parishes in southern Warmia receive their priests soon?” They heard in reply: “Yes, if people pray ardently, then the Church will not be oppressed, and the deserted parishes will receive the priests!” To those  questions was evidenced by oppressions of the Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Poland by tsarist Russia after the “1863 January Uprising and by limitation of its influence in the Prussian sector of partitioned Poland in the period of Kulturkampf. Our Lady’s answers brought consolation to the Poles. They actually became true. Hence, a great number of Poles from all districts paid visits to Gietrzwałd. Due to this fact, the Prussian authorities immediately assumed a resolute negative attitude towards the apparitions. The local administration, the German press and part of the clergy assumed them to be according to Bishop Jan Obłąk, a political manifestation, a Polish national demonstration, fraud and superstition, allegedly dangerous to the state, progress and the public peace. They inflicted various punishments on Polish pilgrims, Poles fathers, the local parish priest Father Augustyn Weichsel, including imprisonment, imposition of fines and suspending in the capacity of ministration.

   The Gietrzwałd events arose the interest of the administrator of the diocese, who was at the time Bishop Filip Krementz. First, he required a detailed report from the parish priest, then he seconded to Gietrzwałd the canons of the Cathedral Chapter to take part in the Rosary services, to observe the state and behaviour of the visionaries in the course of apparitions, and to prepare record of their testimonies and to collect observations of pilgrims and clergy.

    Relations of the Bishop’s delegates confirmed that the apparitions were by no means, fraud and lie, and that the girls behaved normally. There was no bigotry in their manner of behaving or willingness to gain benefits or acknowledgment. They distinguished themselves, as it was said, with modesty, sincerity and homeliness.
 
    The first written notice of the Gietrzwałd apparitions was provided by the Pelplin “Pielgrzym” (Pilgrim). It was on July 10 1877. In a short note, they were compared with what had happened a year earlier in Marpingen. The author of the text might have been the editor of the newspaper, Stanisław (Stanislaus) Roman, who the next year supported Andrzej (Andrew) Samulowski in his attempt to set up a bookstore. More detailed articles appeared in the press. The present administrator of the Archdiocese, Archbishop Edmund Piszcz, wrote in “Studia Warmińskie” (Warmian Studies) in 1977 that “Pielgrzym fulfilled its tasks in relation to the readers in Western Prussia, in relation to the worshippers of the Chełmno diocese well and honestly (...) It was tending in those descriptions to the opinions that what had happened during the summer months of 1877 in Gietrzwałd was fact and truth”.

The impact of the apparitions in Warmia was enormous. Most notably, there was a rebirth of moral life and a heightening of worshiper’s awareness. Five years after the events, in a report dated September 27, 1882, Father Augustyn Weichsel wrote: “Not only my parish, but the whole neighbourhood has become more pious after the apparitions. This was evidenced by the common reciting of the Holy Rosary  all the homes, admittance to the monastery by many people, regular attendance at the church (...) Good effects of the apparitions spread out everywhere, they also infiltrated to the Kingdom of Poland and Russia (...) An apparent result was the habit of the collective reciting of the Rosary everyday. In southern Warmia, the Rosary was prayed in almost at all homes,  as well as in the homes of parishes of the Chełmno, Poznań and Wrocław dioceses”. In the village on the Giłwa River, parishioners were reciting the Rosary in the church three times a day: in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. Moreover, there were numerous cases of conversions of sinners. The Holy Sacraments were frequently received.

    Great changes took place in social and political life. The apparitions of Our Lady were deemed to awaken the national awareness of local Warmians and to rekindle their feeling of unity with Poles from other districts. “Since the Blessed Virgin Mary has spoken to the Warmian children in the Polish language, then it is sin if anyone renounces the mother tongue as God’s gift!” This argument was used by the national activists from southern Warmia when they were undertaking in 1885 a petition action, and were organizing public meetings in favour of restoration of the Polish language in popular schools. It was also repeated many times in “Gazeta Olsztyńska” (Olsztyn Daily), and prior to elections to the Prussian Parliament, when they were seeking votes in favour of a Polish candidate. After all, it was a reasoning strongly affecting a peasant’s imagination.

    The devotion to Our Lady was more than ever strengthening and disseminating. Every year, on June 29, August 15, and September 8 there were coming from all the parts of partitioned Poland to Gietrzwald. Here, their roads converged, here, they were seeking for new courage. To the traditional łosiery (the term is of local Warmia, origin, and means vows made by pious people in the past, or indulgences – translator’s note), people were coming from various parts of Polish Warmia. Pilgrimages were also made by Germans. The influx of pilgrims impelled the next parish priests, Father Augustyn Weichsel’s nephew, Juliusz, Jan Hanowski, Hieronim Nahlenz and Franciszek Klinek to expand the shrine. As early as during  the course of apparitions, on  September 16, 1877,  in the place where Our Lady was appearing to the children, there was a roadside shrine with the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary setup. It was made in Munich. It has been repeatedly renovated, the last time in 1977.

    The Rosary Lane leading to the springlet was planted with hornbeams. Alongside, fifteen small roadside Rosary Chapels were built as many as the Rosary Mysteries. The old ones were replaced in 1977. They were made by Julian Kasprzycki, a sculptor from Myślenice, following the design of the architect Sylwester Kwiatkowski from Białystok.

    From the springlet which was blessed by Our Lady in the evening of September 8, 1877, pilgrims have been taking water from it which brought relief and healing for more than 120 years. The very act of blessing was perpetuated by a figure of the Blessed Virgin in an arbour. Water was next delivered to stony wells in the form of canopies. They are supported by standing angels with shepherds-like faces. Father Franciszek Siłakowski, whose place of origin is Getrzwałd, told in 1946 that in the course of the production of the sculptures, he used to pasture cattle with three colleagues in the meadow, and an unknown artist invited the boys to sit for him. They in turn decided at the springlet, that when they completed the grammar school would enter the theological seminary. And so it happened. Apart from Father Siłakowski, who died in Germany in 1971, the figures might be Józef Wrona from neighbouring Naglady, Edmund Hinzmann and Alojzy Junker from Woryty. Above the springlet are three marble bas-reliefs, showing Moses touching the rock with the stick, from which water sprang up, as well as Israelites drinking water in the desert.

    Construction of the Pilgrim’s House was commenced soon after the apparitions. Father Augustyn Weichsel was supported in his endeavours by pilgrims. However, the first constructions appeared to be too small. In 1910 a new house for pilgrims was built. It was run by the Nuns of the Order of St Catherine. Today, the John Paul II Pilgrim’s House in Gietrzwałd has more than one hundred beds.
 

Gietrzwałd became famous and important, owing it to the local residents and pilgrims coming to the shrine. Thanks to them, the village became a religious centre of southern Warmia in the second half of the 19th century. Warmians from localities close to Olsztyn, Wartembork, today’s Barczewo, and Biskupiec were coming here for mental and national pabulum. Ordinary Warmians met noble and well-educated Poles here with whom, to their surprise, they could easily communicate.    The greatest contribution in popularisation of the Gietrzwałd Holy Mother’s message should be attributed to the parish priest Augustyn Weichsel (1830-1909) who had been ministering for almost forty years there. Bishop Jan Obłąk has written of him that he experienced the Gietrzwałd events deeply, putting all his priestly devotion into service to pious pilgrims and that he also tried to observe the events carefully. Father Weichsel came from a German family who had been living in Pieniężno for years, but he supported Poles in their adherence to their fathers’ faith and language.

    During the apparitions he took care of the visionaries. He seconded them to the St Joseph House in Pelplin. He was arrested several times and sued for propagation of the Marian devotion. He never doubted  the sincerity of Justyna Szafryńska or Barbara Samulowska. He had first sent both of visionaries to the Sisters of Charity in Lidzbark Warmiński, and then they were placed in the St Joseph House in Pelplin, where they supplemented their education. In 1880, both of them took the habit of the Sisters of Charity. Samulowska took the vows and adopted the name of Stanisława. She was in France for some time. In 1895, she was seconded to the mission in Guatemala where she was the head of the Central Hospital for many years. She had a great role in rescue activities during the earthquake. At  her initiative they were building barracks, and she took care of the local population.
 
    The blessed Capuchin monk father Honorat Koźmiński from Zakroczym (1829-1916) promoted the Gietrzwałd apparitions and tied them to the situation of the Polish nation. In his speeches he emphasized that the events of 1877 were an evidence of blessing and grace granted to Poles. “It has yet not been heard that Our Lady appeared to anybody for such a long time-period and in such an intelligible and yet such a solemn way.” Finally, Bishop Filip Krementz should also be credited with services in authentication of the apparitions. It was he, as we know, who set up commissions to examine authenticity of the apparitions, and ultimately, in 1878 promoted the publication in German and in Polish of the study by Father Franciszek Hipler entitled “The Apparitions of Our Lady in Gietrzwałd to the Catholic People According to the Official Documents”.
 
    One cannot omit the subsequent parish priests of the Gietrzwałd shrine either: Father Augustyn Weichsel’s nephew, Juliusz, who ministered here from 1909-1912, Father Jan Hanowski from 1912-1924, Father Hieronim Nahlenz until 1935, and finally Father Franciszek Klinek who died in 1946. Each of them took care of the pilgrims coming to Gietrzwałd and tried to expand the shrine.

    Thanks to the poet Andrzej Samulowski, on 6 April 1878 a Polish bookshop was opened in Gietrzwałd. He ran it with Stanisław Roman at the beginning. It was he who encouraged fellow-citizens, in his correspondence to the Pomeranian and Wielkopolska (Great Poland) newspapers, to assist with the national job in Warmia. Together with Jan Liszewski and Franciszek Szczepański, Samulowski helped to establish “Gazeta Olsztyńska”, the specimen number of which, dated March 25,1886 was just printed in Gietrzwałd. He also established here in 1892 the Peasant’s Society under the invocation of St Wojciech. He was engaged in the struggle for votes to a Polish candidate in the elections to the Prussian Parliament. Andrzej Samulowski devoted several poems to Our Lady. The most known is the “Hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary of Gietrzwałd”, which begins from the following stanzas:
 
It was just the sunset,
When the wonderful brilliant star
Arose in the Warmian land
To shed  light with its rays.
This news almost by a miracle
Was spread among the people,
Far and near, they would say:
In Warmia, there are new miracles.

    In the national job, Samulowski was faithfully accompanied by Antoni Sikorski, a librarian of the Society of Popular Reading Room, also running a bookstore and writing poems; Jan Biegała, whose children demanded in 1906 to say a prayer in the Polish language at school; organist Jan Klatt who was imprisoned by the Prussian authorities because during the famous apparitions he refused to disclose the names of the Warmian fathers who had supported the local parish priest in his ministering; Władysław Chróścielewski, an activist of the local Peasant’s Society; Augustyn Klimek who ran a Polish school in 1920; Polish kindergarten teachers Otylia Tesznerówna, Maria Preyłowska and Maria Zientarówna, the latter also an author of several poems written in praise of the Our Lady of Gietrzwałd.

The anniversaries of the Gietrzwałd apparitions were always solemnly celebrated. On its fiftieth anniversary, September 8, 1927, many pilgrims flocked to Gietrzwałd. In the Warsaw New Records Office there  still remains the notice of the Olsztyn Consul Filip Zawada dated September 18, 1927. It tells us that more than 1500 people arrived from Poland then. The Pomeranian pilgrimage was accompanied by Father Franciszek Rydziewski coming from Sząbruk, and the catechist from  grammar school for boys in Tczew.

    The pilgrims were received just behind the border, in Iława, the consulate employee Władysław Pieniężny and he guided them directly to Gietrzwałd. The Polish sermon in the churchyard was delivered by Father Walenty  Barczewski. The next day Father Jan Hanowski, the  dean of Olsztyn, invited all the clergymen to Olsztyn. During that meeting, Father Antoni Baranowski from Sząbruk appealed for consideration of a greater extent of the Polish language in ministration in southern Warmia. The consul found the meeting among clergymen living in Poland and those living in Warmian extremely useful. Also after 1945, a greater number of local people were coming to the Gietrzwałd shrine in mass.
 
    The Gietrzwałd Blessed Virgin Mary was highly praised by the Primate of Poland Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. He visited the shrine many times. For the first time in 1950, then every time he came to Warmia. On September 10, 1967, to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of the apparitions, he crowned the miracle icon. While putting the crown, he said: “We are placing the golden crowns on your  temples, the Holy Mother of the Warmian Land, that You, being the Mother, could reign, we are kneeling down in front of you in the spirit of full devotion for your  motherly work, just to provide Poland with peace and the spirit of unity. We ask you to teach us to always surrender to lordly powers of the Gospel, affection towards  God and people, to all the requirements of fulfilled affection. We want to come to you, trustful that you always take care, always receive, always listen.” At the same time, the Holy See allowed introduction of the Gietrzwałd Blessed Virgin Mary’s feast for the Warmia’s diocese on September 8 with  special propers of the Mass and of the Breviary. Because of illness, the Primate did not take part in the ceremonies of the one hundredth anniversary of Our Lady apparitions here, in Gietrzwałd which took place on September 11, 1977. Masses of faithful gathered with the representatives of the Episcopal Conference of Poland headed by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, prayed saying: “Remember, Blessed Virgin Mary, noone has heard that anybody who has entrusted his needs to your maternal kindness has been disappointed. Therefore, full of trust in face of pleading might of your heart, we are laying down in your generous hands, the health of your servant and our Primate. Look at his loyalty and devotion, with which he has been serving you for many years as priest and bishop, and restore in full his strength so that he may see your glory in the days of the jubilee of the basilica of Our Lady of Częstochowa and direct the Church in Poland for many years.” And he recovered.
 
    During the ceremonies, the decree of the Warmian Bishop, Józef Drzazga, was read: “Taking into account the conformity of the Gietrzwałd apparitions with faith and morality, the integrity of the recipients of those apparitions, and the blest effects of the Gietrzwałd apparitions over the whole century, to a greater glory of the One God in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception, by virtue of our ordinary Pastoral Office in the holy Diocese Warmian Church, we hereby approve the devotion to Our Lady’s Apparitions in Gietrzwałd as not contradicting Christian faith and morality whose miraculous and divine nature cannot be excluded!”
 
    Earlier, on  February 2, 1970,  Pope Paul VI elevated the church in Gietrzwałd to the rank of Basilica Minor.

    Now knowing Gietrzwałd, it is not difficult to understand the spirit and mentality of the old-time inhabitants of southern Warmia. Their habits were strictly adhered to the church calendar; they were distinguished by authentic piety and extraordinary devotion to the Mother of God. This is confirmed by numerous shrines put in the landscape and Marian sanctuaries in Stoczek, Święta Lipka and just in Gietrzwałd with its message rich in spiritual and national contents.
    Warmians adhered extraordinarily to the ancestors’ injunctions. Due to this, they are also conservative. “Owing to this conservatism,” as Father Walenty Barczewski, a well known ethnographer of Polish Warmia, wrote as early as  1883, “people have remained Poles, they have resisted against all Germanisaton attempts and they will remain so for a long time to come.”