Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski

Tadeusz Bohdan Isakowicz-Zaleski (Թադևոս Վարդապետ Իսահակյան-Զալեսկի; 7 September 1956 – 9 January 2024) was a Polish Roman Catholic and Armenian Catholic priest, author and activist.

He was a leader of the anticommunist student opposition in Kraków in the late 1970s, became a Solidarity chaplain in Kraków's Nowa Huta district in the 1980s, and later an avid supporter of the lustration of the Polish Church.

In the late 1970s, after returning to the seminary, he joined the anti-communist student movements, such as Student Committee of Solidarity.

He served in the years 1975–1977 in Brzeg.

He co-published a Samizdat magazine Cross of Nowa Huta, also in 1977, he debuted in Tygodnik Powszechny with his poems.

In 1980, Isakowicz-Zaleski became engaged in the Solidarity movement; three years later he was ordained and chosen to continue studies at the Papal Armenian Collegium in Rome.

During this period, he was not allowed to leave Communist Poland, because of his underground activities.

Isakowicz-Zaleski began working in Kraków's district of Nowa Huta, where he celebrated Mass for the workers and for the fatherland in the Maximilian Kolbe parish in Mistrzejowice.

Throughout the 1980s, he was repressed, and the Communist secret service agents twice brutally beat him.

In 1985, he was twice tortured by Poland's communist-era Security Service, and some twenty years later in 2006, he started researching the secret police archives kept by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance to discover that 39 Archdiocese of Kraków priests had collaborated with the regime between 1944 and 1989.

This resulted in the much-publicized 'Church Spy scandal' in Poland, where till then the Polish Church was only known for its role in battling communism and preserving traditional and national values both during the partitions of Poland and in the communist era.

Both incidents happened in 1985, and came in the wake of the notorious 1984 murder of fellow Solidarity priest Jerzy Popiełuszko.

The first attack occurred in April at his mother's home, where after gagging him the agents burned a V sign – the victory sign of the outlawed Solidarity trade union which he supported – on his chest with a cigarette.

Later in December of the year, he was attacked again, this time at his presbytery.

In 1987, he co-founded the charitable Foundation of Brother Albert Chmielowski.

He remained director of the Foundation, which owns a shelter in the village of Radwanowice in the suburbs of Kraków.

In 1988, as a priest of the workers, he participated in the strike in Nowa Huta's Lenin Steel Mill.

At the same time, he began helping the poor and the handicapped, together with nuns from local convents.

In 1997, Archbishop Franciszek Macharski named Isakowicz-Zaleski honorary canon of the Kraków Archdiocese to appreciate his charity-related activities.

Between 2001 and 2009 he was the national clergyman and national chaplain of the Armenian community of Poland.

He popularized knowledge about the history and culture of Armenia itself, as well as about the history of the Armenian minority in Poland.

He initiated cooperation between older and newer waves of Armenian immigrants.

Father Isakowicz-Zaleski, who was related to the Catholic Armenian Rite archbishop of Lviv, Izaak Mikołaj Isakowicz also promoted the erection of a monument in Kraków to commemorate the Armenian genocide.

On 3 May 2006, he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, one of Poland's highest orders.

His ordeal was later used by Polish director Maciej Gawlikowski in his 2006 film To Intimidate the Priest.

In 2006, after months of research at the Institute of National Remembrance, he drafted a book on the collaboration between Catholic priests and government agents.

However, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz denied him permission to publish it, unless it was vetted in advance by archdiocesan officials.

On 3 May 2006, Father Zaleski was awarded one of Poland's highest Orders, the Polonia Restituta (Order of Restored Poland) by President Lech Kaczyński.

In November 2006, he received an apology from the nation's Catholic primate, Cardinal Józef Glemp of Warsaw, for earlier criticizing his research into collaboration between the clergy and the Communist-era secret police.

However, Isakowicz-Zaleski, who is known in Kraków for his charity works, resigned from this post in 2006, protesting allegations aimed at him.

Subsequently, in 2007, he was awarded the Order of the Smile and the Polish Ombudsman's Order of Paweł Włodkowic.

Subsequently in 2007 he published his controversial book Księża wobec bezpieki na przykładzie archidiecezji krakowskiej (, but published in English under the title "Priests in the Face of the Security Services" ) on priests who cooperated with communist secret services.

In February 2007, he published Księża wobec bezpieki na przykładzie archidiecezji krakowskiej, a book on priests who cooperated with communist secret services.

On 9 January 2024, Isakowicz-Zaleski died in a Chrzanów hospital.

He was 67.

He is the subject of a documentary 'Poland's Turbulent Priest', shown on BBC World News in 2009, about his struggle with the communist regime and the Polish church.

Isakowicz-Zaleski was born in Kraków to a Polish father and an Armenian mother.

Starting in his high school years, he was engaged in several Roman Catholic youth organizations.

After graduating, he entered a seminary in his native city, which did not prevent him from being called for service in the Polish People's Army.

Reverend Isakowicz-Zaleski was a pastor of Armenian Catholic parish in Gliwice since 1 December 2009.