National Shrine of St Joseph in Kalisz

On 29 April 1945, Polish priests imprisoned in Dachau expected to be executed – instead, they lived to see liberation. Believing they owed their survival to St Joseph, more than 300 priests came to his image in Kalisz on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving three years later. The Collegiate Basilica of the Assumption on plac św. Józefa is now the National Shrine of St Joseph – an estimated 200,000 pilgrims visit each year.

From collegiate church to basilica

The church was founded in 1353 by Archbishop Jarosław Bogoria Skotnicki of Gniezno and became a collegiate church in 1359. The Gothic chancel with its star vault, the sacristy and the chapter house survive to this day. In 1363 King Casimir the Great gave the church a gilded Gothic chalice.

On 3 August 1783 disaster struck: during demolition of the adjoining archbishops' palace, the façade and the middle of the church collapsed. The chancel, sacristy and the altar with the image survived. The rebuilding, completed in 1792, gave the church its late Baroque form – it was lengthened by 12 m and gained a tall tower and a chapel for the miraculous image. In 1978 Pope Paul VI raised it to the rank of minor basilica.

The Holy Family image

Around 1670 a peasant from the village of Szulec, named Stobienia, funded an image of the Holy Family in thanks for his healing and placed it in the collegiate church. The painter is unknown; he may have been a pupil of Tommaso Dolabella. Between 1751 and 1779 the church's custodian recorded almost 500 healings attributed to St Joseph. In 1783 Pope Pius VI crowned a copy of the image in Rome, and the original was crowned in Kalisz on 15 May 1796. After the crowns and metal covers were stolen in October 1983, the image was crowned again on 29 September 1985.

What to see

• The chapel of the miraculous image with the Holy Family.
• The Gothic chancel with its star vault.
• The polyptych by the Master of Gościszowice, thoroughly restored in 2001–2002.
• The Chapel of Martyrdom and Gratitude in the crypt, founded in 1970 by priests who had survived Dachau.
• The organ by Gebrüder Jehmlich of Dresden, inaugurated on 5 February 1944, in a case restored in 2014.

Did you know?

Almost 3,000 clergy were held in Dachau, 1,773 of them Poles. The priests had entrusted themselves to St Joseph as early as 1940 in Sachsenhausen, and in April 1945 they finished a novena just days before the camp was liberated. The first pilgrimage of former prisoners took place on 17–19 April 1948. On 4 June 1997 Pope John Paul II prayed at the shrine and celebrated Mass on the square beside the basilica.

Tripto tip

The basilica is open daily from 06:00 to 19:00. It is an active shrine, so visit outside Mass times; since 2002 the chapel of the image has hosted perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, so keep silent there. The basilica's treasury is a separate exhibition – ask the shrine office about access. The basilica itself takes 30–45 minutes; plac św. Józefa is in central Kalisz, so it is easy to combine with a walk around the town.