Bolesław Kominek (23 December 1903 – 10 March 1974) was a Polish cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Wrocław from 1972 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1973. Biography Bolesław Kominek was born in Radlin II, Wodzisław Śląski, German Empire, to Franciszek, a miner, and Kataryna (née Kozielskich) Kominek. Studying at the gymnasium of Rybnik, and at the Catholic University of Kraków, he received the subdiaconate in 1926 from Cardinal August Hlond, S.D.B., and the diaconate in 1926 from Bishop Arkadiusz Lisiecki. He was ordained to the priesthood by the same Bishop Lisiecki on 11 September 1927 in Katowice (Autonomous Silesian Voivodeship, Poland), and then furthered his studies at the Catholic Institute of Paris and did pastoral work among the Polish immigrants in Paris until 1930. Kominek did pastoral work in the Diocese of Katowice from 1930 to 1939, and with Polish fugitives during World War II until 1945, serving in Lublin, Katowice, and Upper Silesia. With the unilateral shifting westward of the border between Poland and Germany, most of the archdiocese of Wrocław/Breslau was now within Poland, but smaller parts were in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Until the matter was eased by a treaty between West Germany, claiming succession of pre-1945 Germany, and the People's Republic of Poland, the Holy See could not endorse the alteration of the border by reorganizing the identities and boundaries of dioceses untried. It continued therefore to recognize as vicar capitular of the archdiocese Father Ferdinand Piontek (1878–1963), a Polish-speaking German priest who had been elected after the death of Cardinal Adolf Bertram on 6 July 1945. Cardinal Hlond, on the basis of special faculties granted to him but that in reality did not apply to the former German territories, required Piontek to resign from his position of vicar general of the territory east of the new border. On 28 February 1946 Pope Pius XII granted Piontek, when still residing in Wrocław, the rights of a residing bishop. Piontek was expelled from Poland to the British zone of occupation on 9 July, however, he could return to the archdiocese in March 1947, then taking office at the new ordinariate in East German Görlitz, built up since September 1945. On 15 August 1945 Hlond appointed administrators for the three sections into which he divided the Polish archdiocesan territory with effect of 1 September. Kominek was the