On Saturday at 11.30 a.m., an ingres of the fresh metropolitan of Łódź Cardinal will be held in the Archatedal Basilica in Łódź. Konrad Krajewski. More than 50 bishops from all over Poland will participate, including the metropolitan of Kraków cardinals. Grzegorz Ryś.
March 12, card. Krajewski was appointed Archbishop of Łódź by Pope Leon XIV. Called by the Italian media “Robin Hood of the Pope”, the clergyman will presume this function after the cardinals. Grzegorz Rysiu, who has late led the Archdiocese of Kraków.
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Cardinal Konrad Krajewski was the first Pole to receive a cardinal's hat from Pope Francis at the consistory on 29 June 2018.
When asked about what it means to him, he said, “purpura is for the mediocre and volunteers, I have no merit.” At Mass, which on 24 October 2018 the recently appointed cardinal celebrated in his titular church of Santa Maria Immacolata in the Esquilino territory in the centre of Rome, among others, homeless people from the Roman Termini station came. After Mass, the priest had dinner with them.
Konrad Krajewski was born on 25 November 1963 in Łódź. He received his priestly ordination on 11 June 1988. In 1990, he left for Rome, where he studied liturgy at the St Anzelm Liturgical Institute. In 1995 he defended his doctorate at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas of Aquinas — Angelicum.
Later, he briefly returned to the country. He was, among others, a prefect at the Archdiocese Higher Seminary in Łódź. After returning to the Vatican from 1998, he worked for the Office of the Papal Liturgical Celebrations in the Vatican, in which he served as papal ceremonial since 12 May 1999.
On 3 August 2013, Francis appointed him Archbishop and Head of the Apostolic Charity Office. Sakre adopted 17 September 2013. As a papal almsman, he became 1 of the pope's closest associates. 1 of the tasks of the almsman is to study regular to the pope what sums he has donated to charity. He is besides active in giving papal blessings, all of which are utilized to support those in need.
At the beginning of his ministry, he visited migrants on the Italian island of Lampedusa and gave them telephone cards so that they could call their loved ones.
On Good Friday 2014 in the Roman Coliseum, erstwhile the crossroad with Pope Francis continued in the evening, the papal almsman took the money along with the Christmas wishes of the homeless nomadic on the railway stations of the Eternal City. On the Roman stations of Termini and Ostiense and in the area of the Basilica of Our woman the Greater, he distributed over a 100 envelopes, in which next to the tickets with wishes from the Pope, there was besides money – 40 or 50 euros.
In June 2017, he made his flat available close St Peter's Square to a household of refugees who arrived in Rome with a humanitarian bridge, launched by the Holy Community. He goes, and he moves himself to the building where his office is located.
He started a barbershop in the Vatican, a shower and a medical aid facility for homeless people. He besides funded a beach by the sea for people with disabilities.
On 28 June 2018 Pope Francis created him as a cardinal deacon at the consistory in St Peter's Basilica. On 6 October, the Pope appointed him as a associate of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development
In May 2019, Cardinal Krajewski restored electricity in a Roman tenement on Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, inhabited by 450 people, of whom 1 100 were children. The supply of electricity and hot water was cut off there due to debt. Cardinal Krajewski removed the seals from the electricity meter, switched on the electricity and declared that he would pay the bills himself from this minute on. After this event, the Italian press called it “Robin Hood of the Pope”.
After Russian aggression against Ukraine card. Krajewski visited the country repeatedly as a papal envoy. He had his first visit as early as March 2022. He told journalists at the time that Pope Francis paid for fuel for trucks driving aid from Lviv to Kiev residents.
25 March 2022, cardinal. Krajewski committed an act of entrustment of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Fatima on behalf of the Pope.
In mid-April 2022, during a three-day visit to Ukraine, he donated an ambulance from Francis, a gift for a cardiology infirmary in Kiev. A day later, he visited Borodianka – the site of the massacre of the civilian population, carried out by the Russian troops – where he dismissed the cross road. He besides visited the Bucza massacre site. In December 2022 Cardinal Krajewski brought to Ukraine the transport of power generators and thermal T-shirts, and in January 2023 he donated humanitarian aid to the Chersonian population flooded by the blast of the dam in Nowa Kachowce.
After the improvement of the Roman Curia in 2022, he became the prefect of the recently formed Dicastery for the Service of Mercy.
Cardinal Krajewski will cover the Łódź archdiocese after Cardinal Grzegorz Rysiu, who became a Kraków metropolitan in the end of 2025.
Source: Iwona Żurek (PAP)
