As the first head of the Youth Section of the Pontifical Council for the Laity (PCL) during the mid-1980s, Jozef Michalik, the future archbishop of Przemsyl in south-western Poland, became one of the main architects of the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day events.
Archbishop Michalik, who died on 3 May 2026, is best known in recent times for his significant role in the Polish Catholic Church as the vice-president and president of that country’s Bishops Conference. In this article, however, I’d like to look at his earlier role working with young people, particularly in his role with the Pontifical Council for the Laity in Rome.
Origins and studies
Born in Zambrów, northeastern Poland on 20 April 1941, Jozef Michalik was ordained a priest in 1964 and later studied in Warsaw and at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome, where he attended lectures by leading Vatican II theologians including Karl Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger, and Yves Congar. At the same time, he began his studies at the Academy of Christian Archaeology, participating in lectures and expeditions to catacombs and excavations in Italy, Tunisia, and Algeria.
While studying there, he also frequently met with the Polish cardinals Karol Wojtyla and Stefan Wyszynski, both of whom had known Cardijn. Wyszynski, in fact, had launched the JOC in his home diocese as early as 1932, certainly one of the earliest jocist movements in central Europe.
It was the latter, who called Fr Michalik back to Rome in June 1978 to become rector of the Polish Pontifical College after several years working and teaching in Poland. Here, Michalik took the opportunity to invite leading Church figures of the time including Brother Roger of Taizé, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Chiara Lubich and later Pope John Paul II himself to visit the college and meet the students.
The Pontifical Council for the Laity
But it was in his role with the Pontifical Council for the Laity that young Monsignor Michalik, as he soon became, first began to make his mark at international level.
Pope John Paul had declared 1983 as a Holy Year for the Jubilee Year of the Redemption. As soon as it was realised that no event for young people was on the agenda, the PCL charged its vice-president, Bishop Paul Josef Cordes, and Mgr Michalik with the responsibility for preparing a Youth Encounter with the pope.
Thus, the need arose for a physical location near the Holy See to welcome young people and where they could meet.
“Well, right around that time,” Michalik later recalled, “an exhibition on Pier Giorgio Frassati was being held in the church of San Lorenzo in Piscibus, a beautiful old church with an adjacent hall and an underground space.”
“A quick visit was enough to decide it was the ideal location for the Youth Centre,” he added.
Soon after, on 13 March 1983 the San Lorenzo International Youth Centre opened under the patronage of St Lawrence and Pier Giorgio Frassati, a centre that continues to this day.
Youth Encounter
Over the following twelve months, Michalik led the preparations for the Youth Encounter.
As he later explained, the project took on an unexpectedly huge dimension:
For the movements, associations, and communities, it was enough to know that the Pope wanted to meet with young people. Gathered for a consultation, their representatives immediately expressed enthusiasm at the thought of a large youth gathering.
The experience of Taizé could be drawn upon; the Focolare Movement, Communion and Liberation, the Quinta Dimensione Community, and Catholic Action Youth were available. Even the Cardinal Vicar of Rome was open to collaboration. The idea was approved, and the Pontifical Council for the Laity took charge of the coordination: in response, 200,000 young people flocked to the triduum organized for Palm Sunday.
We were all amazed by the multitude of young people who had gathered from all over the world, although naturally the Italians were the most numerous.
The same year, the PCL also established a Youth Office with Mgr Michalik as its first director. As a result, he also became responsible for preparing the Vatican program for the United Nations International Year of Youth in 1985.
The major event on this occasion was another encounter with Pope John Paul II that took place in March 1985, an event that grew even more to attract 300,000 young people from Italy and around the world, inspiring the idea of a regular World Youth Day program.
Towards World Youth Day
Significantly, Mgr Michalik is credited with developing the format for these encounters including prayer, catechesis, and a large-scale meeting with the Pope.
He is also credited with drawing on the influence of the Polish Light-Life Movement (Ruch Światło-Życie). This movement, founded by Father Franciszek Blachnicki in Poland, utilised summer “oasis” camps to engage youth through community and liturgy.
These elements combined to form the blueprint for the World Youth Days which now began to take shape.
As Pope John Paul explained during his annual meeting with the Roman Curia on 20 December 1985
All the young people should feel followed by the Church: that is why all the Church, in union with the Successor of Peter feels more and more that it is committed, on a world scale, in favour of young people, of their worries, their questions, their openness and their hopes, in order to match their expectations, by communicating the certainty who is Christ, the Truth who is Christ, love who is Christ. And in this privileged attention that the Church nurtures in their regard, young people need to find proof that they count a lot because they are worth a lot. Their lives are precious for the Church.”
While technically, Pope John Paul II was the founder of World Youth Day and others credit Bishop Cordes with the idea, it seems only fair for history to also recognise the role of Jozef Michalik as probably the principal architect of these events which have and continue to transform the lives of so many young people around the world.
My meetings with Jozef Michalik
I first met Mgr Michalik when he represented the PCL at an Extraordinary World Council called by the International YCW in Mechelen, Belgium in May 1981 to address a crisis in the movement that threatened to tear it apart.
Although the meeting managed to calm tensions in the short term, the split was eventually consummated five years later in 1986, leading to the establishment of the International Coordination of the YCW alongside the International YCW, a split that unfortunately endures to this day.
As a delegate representing the Australian YCW at the Mechelen meeting, however, I was tasked with defending the need for dialogue between the various parties. This led me at one point to withdrawing from the Council for a short period before a compromise allowed me to rejoin.
It was this position that was appreciated by Fr Jozef, as I called him – actually, he signed his letters simply “Jozef” – who was clearly deeply worried at the unfolding crisis. Perhaps this was why he invited me to visit him in Rome following the Council, which I gladly did.
There he arranged accommodation at the Polish Pontifical College, took me to Mass at St Peter’s with Pope John Paul II, and acted as a personal tour guide around Rome for a whole weekend. He was extraordinarily hospitable.
While there, I remember meeting a young couple, who were his friends, who told me that he was a protégé of John Paul II, and that he had a big future in front of him, a prediction that soon bore eminent fruit, not only with his role at the PCL but even more so as a bishop and archbishop in his own homeland.
Since I was travelling back home for a National Council of the Australian YCW beginning in Adelaide that weekend, Fr Jozef also offered to obtain a letter from Pope John Paul II for the Council. Indeed, several days later a letter signed by Secretary of State, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli on behalf of the pope did arrive, impressing Adelaide Archbishop James Gleeson.
Before I left Rome, Fr Jozef also offered me a ticket for the Wednesday General Audience with John Paul II on 13 May 1981. However, I had to fly out on the Tuesday evening and I remember wistfully looking on the seating in St Peter’s Square all ready for the audience the following day.
I was deeply shocked upon arrival in Melbourne on the Thursday morning to learn that John Paul had been shot at that very audience.
Two years later, in November 1983, I again passed through Rome for several days on the way back from the International YCW World Council in Madrid, which sadly prepared the way for the coming split in the movement as well as with the Vatican. That is a long story in itself that I have written of in other articles.
What I remember of this second meeting with Fr Jozef was his enthusiasm for the plans that had just led to the foundation of the San Lorenzo International Youth Centre, which I believe he took me to visit, and for the forthcoming 1984 Youth Encounter.
But I also recall feeling somewhat miffed that the PCL didn’t appear to be making any effort to involve the YCW, or other Specialised Catholic Action movements in these projects. On the other hand, as I learned much later, other movements, particularly the so-called “new ecclesial movements and communities,” were heavily involved.
“If I remember correctly after 25 years,” Mgr Michalik later noted, “among others, it was Catholic Action Youth, AGESCI, the Charismatics, Communion and Liberation, the Emmanuel Community, the Community of Sant’Egidio, the Neocatechumenal Way, the Focolarini, Light and Life of PF Blachnicki, Quinta Dimensione, and the Taizé Community who declared themselves available for cooperation.”
Having said that, from the YCW point of view, we were already preoccupied with the crisis slowly engulfing the movement. So I also took the opportunity to ask Fr Jozef what Pope John Paul II thought of it all.
He told me that the pope had a great affection for Cardijn and the YCW and was very personally concerned or worried by what was happening.
Sadly, none of this prevented the split in mid-1986. What’s more the Holy See was very quick to recognise the ICYCW as the sole official “interlocutor” between the YCW and the Vatican. Indeed, it seemed to us in Australia that the split had been prepared with the full support of the PCL.
A letter from Cardinal Eduardo Pironio and Bishop Cordes on 4 August 1986 souught to justify the PCL’s position speaking of a crisis in the movement that had lasted for ten years. From the side of the International YCW, it was a bitter outcome after many efforts had been made to overcome misunderstandings and problems.
I don’t know what role Mgr Michalik had in any of these decisions. All I can say is that from my own experience, he did have a genuine concern for the YCW. Soon after, on 1 October 1986, he was appointed bishop of Gorzow, Poland. As a result, I never had another opportunity to meet him.
Looking back after forty years, I regret the fact that the International YCW did not have any form of representation in Rome or at the Vatican that might have enabled us to better navigate the conflicts of that time and also perhaps to be heard in the corridors of the Holy See.
Here, I am strongly reminded that neither the Pontifical Council for the Laity nor its current incarnation, the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, correspond to the model desired by Cardijn, the YCW and its sister movements at the Second Vatican Council for a Holy See body on lay apostolate in which the movements would be truly represented or “have a part,” to cite the phrasing in §26 of the conciliar Decree on Lay Apostolate, Apostolicam Actuositatem.
As Cardijn so often insisted:
It is not to be the Secretariat of the Hierarchy for controlling or supervising the laity but it should much more be (a) a secretariat of the laity for the Hierarchy, and (b) a secretariat of the laity in view of collaboration with other institutions and organisations outside the Church.
Now that Bishop Jozef has joined Cardinals Pironio, Cordes and Cardijn in eternity, I pray for their intercession that the vision of Cardijn, the Specialised Catholic Action movements and Vatican II for a Roman office on lay apostolate will finally be realised.
Meanwhile, I’m deeply grateful for the friendship and hospitality that Fr Jozef offered to me personally. And I’m pleased to remember and pay tribute to the immense contribution he made to young people and the Church, a contribution that continues to bear much fruit around the world.
Stefan Gigacz
REFERENCES
Archbishop Józef Michalik (Catholic Hierarchy)
Zmarł abp Józef Michalik (1941-2026) (Archidiecezya Przemyska)
Jozef Michalik, Testimony of the beginnings of the San Lorenzo Centre (Vatican.va)
Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski – A founding JOC chaplain
Joseph Cardijn, A Roman office for the lay apostolate (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)
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