Michalczew, and its mysterious church

The Church of the Holy Family, Michalczew, halfway between Chynów and Warka. The shape, the setting, the surroundings... are moft unusual. Note the painting of Jesus in the foreground; He is looking up at the Holy Grail, floating in a beam of light from the heavens. [Click to enlarge, then right-click to open image in new tab, then click again to enlarge further for detail.]

An unusual structure that has long piqued my curiosity, I visited it on Sunday afternoon. The gates surrounding the church were all shut fast, the grounds deserted. Clearly not your average Mazovian place of worship. What secrets hide under the Cone and Cross? (It looks like it's lifting off, leaving a trail of bubbles behind it...)

It transpires that indeed there is a mystery – and it's a dark one.

Father Tadeusz Stokowski was parish priest in Michalczew since October 1957. Born in Łowicz in 1923, Tadeusz Stokowski received Holy Orders in 1955, and was assigned to create a rural parish for the nine villages between the existing parish boundaries of Warka and Chynów. Despite a significant number of faithful, the communist authorities blocked the construction of a proper parish church for over 30 years, so Holy Masses were held in a makeshift wooden hut. Permission was finally given in 1978 after the election of Cardinal Wojtyła as Pope led to a thaw in relations between communist state and Catholic church.

Designed by Fr Stokowski, the church was built by parishioners with their own efforts during the materially challenged years of the late communist era. The parish church finally opened in 1982. Built on raised ground to resemble the Jasna Góra monastery in Częstochowa, the building has two levels, ramps leading to the upper one; each level has its own altar; there's also an altar in the grounds, along with statues at all the Stations of the Cross in the grounds. 

******

On the morning of Sunday 3 June 1990, parishioners were gathering for the Confirmation ceremony of local teenagers. The church had been specially decorated for the occasion. A bishop from the Warsaw diocese had just arrived – but where was Fr Stokowski? 

People started to search. Within minutes, inside the presbytery, across the road from the church, they discovered the dead body of his housekeeper, Marzanna Kubiak, 59, lying in a pool of blood. And no sign of  the parish priest. The search widened, but Fr Stokowski was nowhere to be seen. The Mass went ahead, officiated by the bishop, but without the Confirmation.

That afternoon (according to one account, according to another, three days later), while feeding the flock of sheep that Fr Stokowski kept in a barn behind the presbytery, neighbours found his dead body under a pile of hay. The police determined that he had been strangled.

Money and commemorative coins were found lying around on the floor; there was no sign of anything stolen from the presbytery. Nor were there any signs of a break-in; the housekeeper seems to have let in the murderers. Fingerprints were taken, but despite extensive efforts to find the killer or killers, no suspect has ever been arrested. And so – a mystery endures.

I should like to return to Michalczew to see the interior(s) of the church, though without camera, using only my phone to take photos. Is there a clue in the church decorations?

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