August Hlond (July 5, 1881 – October 22, 1948) was a Polish cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, who was Archbishop of Poznań and Gniezno in 1926 and Primate of Poland. He was then appointed as the Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw in 1946. He was the only member of the College of Cardinals to be arrested and taken into custody by the Gestapo during World War II, and for the final years of his life was a critic of the Soviet-backed Communist regime in Poland. His cause of canonization commenced in 1992 and he was granted the title of Servant of God; on 19 May 2018 he was named Venerable after Pope Francis confirmed his heroic virtue. Early life and ordination Second son of a railway worker, he was born in the Upper Silesian village Brzęczkowice (), then ruled by Germany, now part of Mysłowice (), on 5 July 1881. At twelve-years-of-age, Hlond went to Turin, Italy to study for the priesthood in the Salesian Congregation. He later studied a doctorate of philosophy in Rome, returned to Poland to complete Theology, and was ordained in Cracow in 1905. In 1909 Hlond was sent to Vienna to be headmaster at a boy's secondary school. He remained in the city for 13 years, and working with spiritual and charitable organisations for Poles, and becoming Provincial of the Salesians for Austria, Hungary and Germany in 1919. Following the break up of Austria-Hungary after World War I, Pope Pius XI appointed Hlond as Apostolic Administrator for Polish Upper Silesia in 1922, and Hlond became the first Bishop of the Diocese of Katowice in 1925. Bishop and cardinal Hlond was consecrated as Bishop of Katowice on January 3, 1926. He succeeded Cardinal Edmund Dalbor, as Primate of Poland soon after and in 1927, was appointed as Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria della Pace by Pope Pius XI. Through the tumultuous 1930s, Hlond condemned "escapism" and called on the Church should challenge the evil realities of the times, and, speaking 12 languages, became an influential member of the College of Cardinals on the international stage. In 1932, together with Father Ignacy Posadzy founded the Society of Christ. World War II The invasion of predominantly Catholic Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939 ignited the Second World War. The Nazi plan for Poland entailed the destruction of the Polish nation, which necessarily required attacking the Polish Church, particularly