After the end of his five-year term as spokesman of the Polish Bishops’ Conference on July 1, 2020, Fr. Paweł Rytel-Andrianik will become International Communication Director for the Church in Poland. The nation needs constant and modern communication on the international level, according to the President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki.
The President of the Polish Episcopate stressed: “The Church in Poland has a lot of content to give abroad. Many people want to be up to date with what the Church in Poland lives, while we want to be up to date with what is happening in the Church in other countries. I’m glad that Fr. Dr. Paweł Rytel-Andrianik will be the International Communication Director for he is a competent person to undertake this task. He completed his studies in Rome, Jerusalem, and Oxford, he speaks foreign languages, he has the experience of a spokesman of the Episcopate and is in ongoing contacts with the Vatican and the largest news agencies in the world,” noted Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki.
In connection with the new nomination, Fr. Paweł Rytel-Andrianik said: “I want to thank Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, the President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, for his trust and for entrusting me a task that is something new to build. I’m very happy about this new service in the Secretariat of the Polish Bishops’ Conference under the guidance of Bishop Arthur Miziński, Secretary-General of the Polish Episcopate. I am grateful for the constant kindness of the journalists and to everyone I work and meet with. With God’s help and protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary and in cooperation with many people, I will try to do my best to fulfill a new mission that is a service” – he said.
Fr. Paweł Rytel-Andrianik is 43 years old and is a priest of the Diocese of Drohiczyn. After his ordination in 2001, he was for two years a vicar in the parish of Ostrożany. Then he was sent to study abroad, where he received the following degrees: Licentiate in Theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome (2003); Licentiate (2008) followed by a Ph.D. (2012) in Biblical Studies and Archaeology at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem; master (2011) and then a Ph.D. (2015) at the University of Oxford. He also studied in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University, Hebrew Union College, and École biblique et archéologique française. In 2012, he became professor of the Holy Scripture at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome and a lecturer at the College of Social and Media Culture in Toruń, and in 2014 – lecturer at the University of Drohiczyn Seminary. Between 2013 and 2015 he was deputy editor in chief of the Catholic weekly “Sunday” for Western Europe and the Middle East. He was awarded the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Medal. From 2015 he is a spokesman of the Polish Bishops’ Conference. In his work with the means of social communication and in the pastoral ministry he speaks over a dozen foreign languages.
