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Józef Cebula was born on March 23, 1902 in Malnia, Poland, eldest of three children.
As a child, physicians thought that he had incurable tuberculosis. When he recovered, however, Jósef visited a shrine of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and shared his story with the priest there. The priest suggested that Jósef study at the minor seminary in Krotoszyn, Poland. He followed the priest’s suggestion.
After finishing his secondary education, Józef entered the Oblate novitiate in Markowice, Poland and then studied philosophy in Liege, Belgium. He did his theology studies in Lubliniec, Poland and was ordained on June 5, 1927 while still in seminary.
In 1931, Fr. Józef became a superior in the Oblate seminaries and novice master at Markowice in 1937.
In 1939, German forces occupied Poland and declared that loyalty to the Church was illegal. In October of that year, the 100-member Oblate community of Markowice was placed under house arrest and sent to work as farm laborers. But in 1940, the Oblate novices were sent to the notorious Nazi concentration camp, Dachau in Germany. Fr. Józef, however, was not sent with the novices to Dachau at the time.
Though it was illegal to function as a Catholic priest in Poland at the time, Fr. Józef continued to minister as priest secretly at night. During the time of his house arrest, Fr. Józef lived with two Oblate Brothers in a one-room place. During the day, he worked as a laborer, and at night he celebrated Mass, visited the sick and dying, blessed marriages, and baptized babies. Even though the authorities warned him not to function as a priest, Fr. Jósef ignored them. Every midnight, in fact, he celebrated Mass in one of the outbuildings of the farm or cellar. Often, the only “congregation” he had was one of the Brothers.
On April 2, 1941, after celebrating his midnight Mass, Fr. Józef had a premonition that the end was coming. He said, “Brother, today I have celebrated my offering to God for the last time. I advise you to make your confession to me for the last time.”
And it came to pass that as he was eating his lunch on April 2, 1941, the Nazi SS arrested him and took him to a resettlement camp at near Inowroclaw, Poland, and five days later, he was sent to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. There, Fr. Józef was harassed, tortured, and forced to do hard labor.
From accounts of those who knew him well, Fr. Józef was a mild-mannered man. But on May 9, 1941, the Nazi captors ordered him to run with heavy rocks on his back toward the barbed wire fence. He did as he was ordered to do, but only before saying, “It is not you who are in charge. God will judge you.” As he ran with the rocks on his back, a guard shot him to death with a submachine gun and reported that Fr. Cebula “…was shot while trying to escape.”
Fr. Józef’s body was taken to a crematorium and burned to ashes.
Pope John Paul II beatified Józef with 107 others who are now known as the “108 Martyrs of World War II.” Blessed Józef Cebula’s feast day is April 28.
