News

Compass sponsoring trip to Poland, Austria, Germany

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

	European tour What: Compass tour to Poland, Austria, Germany Who: Led by Bp. David Zubik When: June 1-12, 2007 Features: Visits to numerous churches, shrines and other historic sites and daily Mass. Cost: $2,999 before Feb. 21, 2007 ($3,099 after Feb. 27). Optional $50 roundtrip bus Green Bay/Chicago. Information and free brochure: Pentecost Tours, 1-800-713-9800; e-mail travel@pentecosttours.com, tour No. 70602; or at The Compass, Amy Kawula, (920)272-8212 or 1-877-500-3580, ext. 8212, or akawula@gbdioc.org.

Visits to the birthplace of Pope John Paul II, the Black Madonna, the Divine Mercy Shrine and the Auschwitz Death Camp are among the stops next June for a Compass-sponsored trip to Europe.

Green Bay Bp. David Zubik will lead the June 1-12 tour to Poland, Austria and Germany. Bp. Zubik also will celebrate Mass daily.

The tour will leave from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on June 1. Motorcoach travel to and from Green Bay to Chicago will be available as a tour option.

On the first full day in Warsaw, travelers will go to St. Stanislaw Kostka Church and museum. Blessed Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko served at the parish in the 1980s and attracted thousands to his Sunday sermons in which he supported the banned Solidarity labor union and spoke out against abuses by the communist government.

The Polish secret police abducted him on Oct. 19, 1984. His savagely beaten body was found 11 days later in an icy reservoir.

The following day will begin with a tour of Warsaw, including the Old Town and the site of the Warsaw Ghetto. Next comes Niepokalanow, the City of the Immaculata, which St. Maximilian Kolbe founded in the late 1920s.

The community had its own daily Catholic newspaper, monthly magazine, radio station, mission house and seminary until the Nazis arrested Fr. Kolbe and 40 of his brothers.

The next day in Czestochowa, travelers will see the 600-year-old Jasna Gora Monastery and its Black Madonna icon in the Gothic Chapel of Our Lady.

Krakow and its Divine Mercy Shrine, where Sr. Maria Faustina lived and had numerous visions awaits the next day. That will be followed by a tour of Krakow, including the Gothic Royal Castle, the Cathedral and St. Florian Church, where Pope John Paul served in his second assignment as a priest.

The following day, after Mass at the Divine Mercy Shrine, the group will go to Auschwitz Concentration Camp, where more than one million people - mainly Jews, but also Gypsies, non-Jewish Poles and Soviet prisoners of war - were imprisoned and murdered during World War II. One of those murdered was Fr. Kolbe, whom Pope John Paul canonized in 1982.

A visit to Pope John Paul II's boyhood home and church in Wadowice awaits the next day.

After that, the tour moves on to Austria for a tour of Vienna, including the gardens of Belvedere Palace, Hoftburg Palace, the State Opera, the 13th century St. Stephen Cathedral, the Prater amusement park and its giant Ferris wheel, the ultra-modern United Nations City along the Danube River, Schonbrunn Palace and the shrine of Mariazell.

The next day, en route from Vienna to Salzburg, travelers will stop for Mass at Melk Abbey, by the Danube River.

The next day in Salzburg, birthplace of Mozart, a guide will lead The Sound of Music tour, including St. Peter's Churchyard, the Salzburg Cathedral, Nonnberg Convent of Benedictine nuns and the Fortress Hohensalzburg, all from the musical, and other great houses, mansions, the Festival Hall, and Mirabelle Gardens.

The next day brings Munich, Germany, the capital of Bavaria, famed for parks and palaces, 32 museums, New Town Hall (built in 1867), its 260-foot tower and carillon, St. Peter Church, the Cathedral Church of Our Lady, and the Ludwigstrasse.

The following day, the group departs Munich for the U.S.