Helena Kmieć comes from Libiąż, a town west of Kraków. Poles have only a vague sense of where it is. Let us be honest: most Australians and Americans’ knowledge of Europe becomes hazy beyond Italy, Germany, and France. Towns off the beaten track rarely draw much attention. Yet, God seems to enjoy writing salvation history in places like Libiąż, Bethlehem, and Nazareth—the last of which was once asked whether “anything good can come from” it (John 1:46).
Scripture tells us that far greater things took place in obscure Jewish towns like Bethany and Nain, Capernaum, and Cana, than in Sydney, Chicago, or Montreal. It has now been just over two years since her beatification process was solemnly opened, on May 10, 2024, in Kraków. It was there, in the capital of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship, that Helena was born in February 1991.
Her mother died six weeks after her birth, and her father, Jan, remarried Barbara Zając. Helena once said that she had three mothers: her biological mother, Agnieszka; Barbara, her stepmother; and the Blessed Mother.
Though Helena was born in the same year as Saint Carlo Acutis, I see more similarities to Saint Pier Giorgio than to the Italian millennial.
Her sister Teresa Kmieć said that the Eucharist was at the centre of Helena’s life. Daily Eucharist was also the crucial point of reference in Pier Giorgio’s journey.
According to the cause’s postulator, Fr. Dr Pawel Wróbel, “Almost every day during her studies, she participated in the Holy Mass, which was an extremely important point of the day for her.”
“Living and studying in an English-speaking country had been a great dream of hers. After her first year of high school, she left for a two-year scholarship at Leweston School, a boarding school in England. During the recruitment process, she was asked if she would still accept the scholarship if there were no opportunities to attend Holy Mass there. She answered No! ‘God was the most important thing to her,’ recalled Mariola Kaźmierska, a lay missionary.
In elementary school, Helena was moved from third to fifth grade because of her exceptional intellectual gifts, completing the fourth-grade curriculum through an individualized learning program. Pier Giorgio, by contrast, studied diligently but did not possess extraordinary academic talent; learning did not come easily to him. In secondary school, he failed his Latin exams twice, which was the main reason he changed schools.
The postulator of her beatification cause noted that Helena had been deeply moved by the vision of Blessed Francis Mary of the Cross Jordan, founder of the Salvatorians, who taught that no one should rest while even a single person in the world has yet to know and love Jesus Christ, the world’s only Savior.
Both young men felt a call to draw others closer to God. The Polish woman, drawing on her particular gifts, led musical evangelization at Wrocław’s main railway station. The Italian man, meanwhile, hoping to evangelize young people and laborers, chose to study mining engineering at the Royal Polytechnic University of Turin, which he began in 1918. In 2009, Helena began studying mining engineering at the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice. She did not, however, pursue work in her field; instead, she became a flight attendant for a budget airline.
As her friends recall, Helena lived a life of vibrant activity and possessed a deep love of mountains, hiking, and cycling. The Tatras, the highest range in the Carpathians and often called the “miniature Alps,” lay within a stone’s throw of her hometown. It is certain that the future Blessed frequently made her way to this most breathtaking region of Poland. There she felt especially close to the Creator and stood in awe of the stunning beauty of Creation. Pier Giorgio, too, found in the real Alps his own sanctuary for meditation on God’s presence.
Not only Pier Giorgio but also Helena Kmieć was keenly aware that their undertakings carried the risk of unforeseen harm to their health. Yet Helena could scarcely have foreseen that her service would ultimately demand the offering of her very life. Pier Giorgio, for his part, took part in public demonstrations against the two totalitarianisms of the twentieth century—the Red and the Brown—actions that, in those turbulent years, entailed real danger.
In 2012 Helena joined the Salvatorian Missionary Volunteers, a community of roughly eight hundred lay Catholics from across Poland who spend a year of spiritual formation before being sent on missions abroad.
She first helped lead day camps for children in Hungary and Romania, then travelled to Lusaka, Zambia, where she taught English, mathematics, and the Gospel to street children and children from impoverished families, while also helping to provide their most basic needs, including meals. Though she had been warned that Zambia was not a safe country, Helena’s desire to serve others proved stronger than her fear. Her next destination—and, tragically, her last on this earth—was to be Bolivia.
Upon her return to Poland, Helena planned to carry on as a flight attendant, marry her boyfriend, and start a family. Yet, as it turned out, during a retreat she wrote down the aims that would shape her life on a piece of paper later discovered after her death: to learn Spanish, found a Catholic ministry for flight attendants, and become a saint.
South American countries are seldom counted among the safest destinations, especially for an outsider. Bolivia, after all, is a far cry from the relative safety of a country like Hungary. Helena did not go there to lie under a beach umbrella, on a private resort beach, sipping tequila.
Helena was aware of the stakes; more than three decades earlier, two of her compatriots, Bl. Father Zbigniew Strzałkowski and Bl. Father Michał Tomaszek, had been martyred in Peru at the hands of the Maoist guerrilla group the Shining Path. This young Polish woman must have weighed the inherent dangers of her mission.
Arriving in Cochabamba, a city of 630,000 Helena helped Polish nuns from the Congregation of the Servant Sisters of Dembica finish work on a new orphanage. However, she was brutally murdered with fourteen knife wounds just 16 days into her mission.
Following her violent death, many believed that ‘Helena went to Heaven.’ They began coming to Helena’s grave and entrusting their requests to God through her intercession. The belief in her sanctity began to spread quickly, not only in Poland, but also beyond its borders.
In January 2017, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda posthumously conferred upon Helena Kmieć the Golden Cross of Merit. Government representatives attended the missionary’s funeral, and the funeral Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, the former secretary of St. John Paul II, together with 120 priests. The rites were accorded the honours of a state funeral.
Pier Giorgio’s funeral also was a remarkable event. The city’s streets were filled with countless mourners, many of whom were strangers to his family—the poor and needy people he had so selflessly helped for seven years.
In an interview with the Catholic weekly Gość Niedzielny, Fr. Wróbel said that, in her cause, he wants to focus ‘not on her tragic death, but on her beautiful life.’ This means that a miracle performed through her intercession is required for her beatification.
“The love Helenka brought to the world was more powerful than death.” — Bishop Jan Zając, emeritus auxiliary bishop of Kraków, Helena’s great-uncle
“To me, Helenka’s life was like a song sung with all her might to praise and glorify God. It was not only sung with her lips, but with her whole soul and heart — in everything she intended, decided, strove for, and did. Her entire life was filled with faith, a faith that was beautiful and completely unpretentious. Always fresh, always burning bright. […] I want to learn from this saint whom the Lord allowed me to cross paths with for a brief moment.” — Fr. Paweł Fiąćek, SDS
Many hope that Helena Kmieć could become the next millennial to be raised to the Altars.
Reflecting on the Servant of God—Helena Kmieć, let us turn to the deeply meaningful words inscribed on her memorial plaque:
“I still have many of my own dreams and goals, but one of the ideals I strive to achieve is the desire to live for others. Doing something only for oneself does not bring as much joy as doing something for another person. It is wonderful to be able, through one’s actions and talents, to bring a smile to someone’s face and to offer help to others.”