"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.
