To kill a priest - Kevin Ruane

"To Kill a Priest" captures the wide ramifications of the story of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, a popular young parish priest in a Warsaw suburb who steadfastly spoke out from his pulpit against the abuses of communism and supported the then-banned Solidarity trade union. Abducted by the Polish secret police on 19th October 1984, his savagely beaten body was found 11 days later in an icy reservoir.;Kevin Ruane documents how, for the first time, a communist government was forced to try and condemn the repressive actions of its own security agents and admit its own wrong-doing. It proved to be the decisive crack in the fortress of Eastern Block Communism, forcing it - for the first time within its own boundaries - to share power with a non-Communist organisation: the Solidarity trade union. The lingering suspicions that not all the guilty were brought to justice, within this compelling tale in which Father Popieluszko's determined heroism - in stark contrast to the dark years of coercion and cynicism behind the Iron Curtain - places the combative Popieluszko alongside history's other freedom fighters such as Nelson Mandela and Che Guevara.