Polish Bishops' Conference has new Secretary General

Warsaw - The Polish bishops have voted: At their plenary assembly, they appointed a new Secretary General of the Bishops' Conference. The 55-year-old will play a key role in the country's Catholic Church in future.

Published on 11.06.2024 at 09:21 –

Poland's Bishops' Conference is getting a new Secretary General. At their plenary meeting in Warsaw on Monday, the members elected Marek Marczak (55), Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Lodz, as the successor to Auxiliary Bishop Artur Mizinski (59) from the Archdiocese of Lublin. Mizinski held the office for ten years and, according to the statutes, could not be re-elected.

As the new Secretary General, Marczak is now a member of the three-member Presidium of the Bishops' Conference. He was born on 17 February 1969 in the town of Piotrkow Trybunalski, just 50 kilometres south of the central Polish city of Lodz. He entered the seminary immediately after leaving school. He was ordained a priest in Lodz in 1994, followed by two years of pastoral work in a village parish and then a degree in dogmatics at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, which he completed with a doctorate in 2004.

Marczak was then a lecturer at the seminary in Lodz and became its rector in 2013. Pope Francis appointed him auxiliary bishop of Lodz in 2015. In 2017, Marczak administered the archdiocese as administrator for eight months until Grzegorz Rys was appointed archbishop. Rys has been a cardinal since 2023. (KNA)