Catholic leader praises Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz

Published: 2004-08-30

WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- A Catholic leader praised Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz, a Polish Catholic who spent years in the United States. Milosz died at his home in the southern Polish city of Krakow Aug. 14. He was 93. He was buried in Krakow after an Aug. 27 funeral Mass. Pope John Paul II, who first received the poet after Milosz won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1980, corresponded with him. The pope was reported to have drawn on Milosz's work for his 2003 poetry collection, "Roman Tryptych." During the funeral Mass at Krakow's St. Mary Basilica, Archbishop Jozef Zycinski of Lublin said, "Expressing the mood of his heart, this poet warned young people against the bitter taste of success -- he taught them how to live in a world divided between grief and hope." The archbishop said, "Like a contemporary (St.) Augustine, he searched and doubted, laughed and suffered, vividly participating in the great struggle between God's city and a purely human city."

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