The Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati Fraternity of Poland gathered to pray for peace
On Saturday, 14 December 2024, the Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati Fraternity of the Province of Poland gathered at Fort VII to pray for peace in union with the entire Dominican Order. December is a month of Dominican prayer for peace. In this year we remember first and foremost Haiti, a republic whose inhabitants have been experiencing multiple forms of violence for many years: they are victims of murder, kidnapping, sexual violence, human trafficking, and slave labour. We also do not forget about other tragedy-struck places, among them Ukraine- our neighbour. The motto of our prayer was the verse taken from the Book of Genesis: “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” We joined this cry – a cry for peace and for that reason, that no man will water the soil with the blood of another man.
The place where we gathered is Fort VII. This is part of the defensive fortifications that surrounded Pozna? in the 19th century. In October 1939, just after the invasion of Poland, the invading Nazis established here the first concentration camp in our country. Fort VII then became the place of execution and death of thousands of people whose only guilt was that they were Polish. Among the prisoners and victims of this camp are also saints of the Catholic Church. Looking at the cells created by the Nazis in the former gunpowder warehouses, at the death wall and the gas chamber, we realized the enormity of human suffering that this place witnessed. We realized how important peace is, and what its absence can result in.
The patron of our fraternity, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, will be declared a saint this year. Joining in the celebrations of next year’s canonization, we are going to organize a series of events. The December prayer was the first of them. A hundred years ago, Pier Giorgio, seeing the rise of fascism, prayed and worked for peace. Today, seeing the war destroying the neighbouring country and the injustice and violence in the Republic of Haiti and in many other places, we cry out to God for the same intention. We prayed in the newly opened ecumenical chapel in Fort VII. It is located right next to the former cells for camp prisoners. We sang the Lamentations of Jeremiah, Psalms, and the Litany for Peace, composed by one of our sisters from verses of the Holy Scriptures. We then took part in the Eucharist. The daughter of a former prisoner of the Fort VII Concentration Camp prayed with us. She told the story of her father, who was saved by the wife of one of the SS men supervising the camp. Her story was a ray of hope for us.
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