Museum Opens For Polish Martyr
A museum dedicated to the life of a pro-Solidarity priest tortured and murdered by Poland's communist secret police opened on Saturday, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the killing.
The museum is situated in the cellar of Warsaw's St. Stanislaw church, where Father Jerzy Popieluszko's "Masses for the Homeland" attracted tens of thousands of worshippers.
Popieluszko was abducted and killed by police on October 19, 1984, and his body was stuffed in a sack weighed down with stones and thrown into the Vistula River. His grave is located in the church's courtyard.
Visitors enter the 10-room museum from the priest's house, seeing the cradle in which he slept as a child. The exhibition also includes the clothes in which he was abducted.
The murder outraged predominantly Roman Catholic Poland, and more than 600,000 Poles attended his funeral.
The communist regime conducted a quick trial, in which four Security Service officers were convicted. All of them have been since released from prison.
The Vatican started a process of beatification of the slain priest in 2001.