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      VATICAN (CWNews.com) -- During his June trip to Poland, Pope John Paul II will preside at three beatification ceremonies, and one canonization.

      On June 7-- the third day of his 12- day stay in Poland-- the Pope will preside at the beatification of Father Stefan Wicenty Frelichowski, in a ceremony in the northern town of Torun. Father Frelichowski was serving as a pastor in Torun in 1939 when he was arrested by the Nazi regime, ultimately to be imprisoned at Dachau until his death. In 1944, when typhoid fever swept through that concentration camp, he ignored a quarantine in order to bring spiritual and material comfort to those who were ill. He contracted the disease himself, and died in the prison-camp hospital in February 1945-- just before Allied troops arrived to liberate the prisoners.

      Six days after that ceremony, the Pope will beatify a group of 110 other Poles, in a ceremony that will take place in Warsaw. The June 13 ceremony will include the beatification of 108 more Catholic victims of the Nazi campaign against the Church-- including three bishops (Antoni Julian Nowowiejski, Leon Wetmanski, and Wladyslaw Goral), nine lay people, and 96 religious who were imprisoned because of their faith and died in concentration camps. Also beatified that day will be Sister Regina Protmann (1552-1613), who founded a congregation dedicated to care for the sick; and Edmund Bojanowski (1814- 1871), an educator who devoted himself to care for poor children.

      Finally, on June 16-- the final day of his visit-- the Pope will canonize Sister Cunegonde (1234-1292) in the town of Stary Sacz. Commonly known today as Blessed Kinga, she was the wife of a Duke of Krakow, who devoted herself to the spiritual and physical health of her subjects, helping the region to recover in the wake of a Tartar invasion. Blessed Kinga brought Franciscan monasteries into the area, and in 1288, after the death of her husband, she entered a convent in Stary Sacz which she herself had helped to found.

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