The growth of the anti-Catholic culture in Poland requires a good spiritual formation and much prayer from all priests, but especially from young people. Poland remains a bastion of Catholicism in Europe, but also shows signs of a secularization that affects especially the youth, hence this priest urges relentless evangelization. Adamski points out that in Poland around 90 % of the population still declares itself Catholic, but of this percentage only 30 % attend Mass on Sundays, a higher percentage than in other European countries.
Torun is the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus, a canon, mathematician and astronomer known, above all, for being the author of the heliocentric theory that demonstrated that the Earth revolved around the sun. His life and scientific contributions have been some of the clearest demonstrations of the deep bond that has existed throughout history between science and faith.
It is from this Polish diocese that the following comes from Bartosz AdamskiD. in Theology from the University of Navarra and currently also professor at the university that bears the name of this great Catholic scientist in Torun.
"Every year we observe that this percentage goes down. Generally, young people are not interested in the faith, so the culture in Poland is becoming more secular and anti-Catholic every year", explains Bartosz. About this situation, he tells an anecdote: "one of my priest friends is Spanish and when he visited my country during his vacations he told me that Poland is now like Spain thirty years ago. So, we can expect that in the future the Church in Poland will have far fewer faithful. Of course, we as Polish priests try to cope with this trend and, for this, we evangelize, we do catechesis and we form people and ourselves".
Bartosz Adamski entered the seminary of his diocese at the age of nineteen after finishing high school. "My family, that is, my parents and grandparents, have played an indispensable role in the growth of my faith. They gave me the necessary foundations to be a Christian, showed me what an honest life was and taught me how to live in true love," confesses this priest.
About his call, he himself acknowledges that it is a real mystery and that "only God knows how it happened". He admits that he was never an altar boy nor did he participate in parish groups. He simply went to Mass on Sundays and sometimes during the week. For this reason, he believes that his vocation was forged, both in his heart and in his mind, from the time he received the sacrament of Confirmation. "Since I was young, I liked philosophy and I was looking for an answer to the question: how is the world ordered, and then to another: who orders it? So my search led me to the major seminary".
Once ordained, Adamski was sent by his bishop to Pamplona to pursue his doctorate in Dogmatic Theology at the University of Navarre. About this stage of his life, which was from 2018 to 2022 and included the entire coronavirus pandemic, this priest assures us that this time of studies was very important for his priestly life. "I deepened my theological knowledge and gained much experience of church life in a very international environment," Bartosz tells us.
What struck him most was the university itself: "Its order, its rich library, its well-prepared professors and the academic atmosphere. All this invites you to study". Another lesson that Father Adamski learned from his time in Spain is that to be a good theologian you have to read a lot, work hard and learn the correct methodology.
He makes a special mention of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus that he had to live through in Pamplona. It was a complicated period, but he also found a way to cope with it: "I remember that in our residence the meetings over coffee helped us a lot, so I could talk with the brothers and survive the time of confinement".
Finally, this Pole has a special message for the benefactors of CARF: "Thank you for your prayers and offerings! Thanks to you priests in many countries can obtain a good formation, and not only theological, to better serve the Church".
Faced with the challenges of today's priests, especially the younger ones, Bartosz Adamski is clear that "the most important thing is the priest's personal relationship with Jesus Christ". Therefore, he stresses that "prayer and the spiritual formation are the key". And he stresses this last point since he believes that study is fundamental for a priest to know what God is like and to be able to respond to the demands of today's world. All this helps - in his opinion - to obtain a priestly identity. "The priest cannot forget who he is," he said.
