Welcome to our daily rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for.

We are at the shrine of Father Yersi Papayushko, the priest who was put to death by the

communists in Poland in 1984.

Now to really appreciate his martyrdom

and to appreciate the blessings that you have,

you need to understand just a little bit about life in Poland

under communism.

Satan's goal is to destroy the fatherhood of God in the world, to remove God from the world, and the whole communist system was built on a lie.

And that lie had three parts.

God does not exist.

There is no higher power than the government, and material reality is all

there is. And by denying God and religious practice, the Soviets aim to control not only the political,

economic and social spheres,

the very conscience of individuals.

And when Poland fell under the control of the Soviet Union,

the Polish people were denied almost all the freedoms that we enjoy, that I dare say

we take for granted. They were denied the freedom of religion. The

communist government saw the Catholic Church as a threat due to its influence and

its opposition to the communist atheistic ideology, many churches were closed,

clergy were persecuted and religious activities were restricted.

And practicing your faith would often result in losing your job

...