The confessional was where people really got to know him. He’d sit there for hours. Before Mass, after Mass, late into the evening. His Polish was rough around the edges, but in that little wooden box, perfect grammar didn’t matter.
Army officers sat next to widows in his line. Wealthy women waited behind farmers. Even cardinals came to confess their sins to this quiet German monk who spoke broken Polish.
But Anicet had a strange way of giving penance.
If a rich person confessed to him, he didn’t assign prayers. He assigned charity. “Feed a family this week.” When the Cardinal came to confess one winter, Anicet told him his penance was to personally deliver coal to a freezing family across town.
From the rich, he asked for bread. From the poor, he asked for prayers. In his mind, everyone was responsible for everyone else.
Then the Nazis invaded Poland.
Anicet was 64 years old. Most people his age would have hidden in the monastery, kept their heads down, waited for the storm to pass.
Not Anicet.
He walked straight to the German Embassy. His fluent German got him permits that Polish priests couldn’t get. He used those permits to collect food, medicine, clothing. Then he walked right back onto those dangerous streets and handed it all out.
To anyone who needed it. Jews. Christians. Poles. Germans. It didn’t matter to him.
Read more on the next page ⬇️⬇️⬇️
