95 years ago, March 20, 1931, For the first time, Vatican Radio broadcast a message in Polish. The message of Pius XI on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the encyclical “Rerum novarum” was then read.
Regularly, Polish broadcasts began broadcasting in 1938. Today, the Polish language is 1 of the 7 main languages of communication of the Church, and the Polish section of Vatican Radio – Vatican News and “L’Osservatore Romano” since October 2025 belongs to the 7 main language sections of the Vatican.
Vatican Radio began broadcasting on February 12, 1931. Guglielmo Marconi, the radio inventor, worked on Pius XI's command to establish a Vatican radio station. The first message in Polish on the Vatican Radio air sounded the following month. Fr Tadeusz Zakrzewski, Rector of the Polish Papal Institute in Rome, later Bishop of Pius XI, read the message.
Officially, however, the Polish section of the Vatican Radio started operating more than 7 years later. Its date of establishment was November 24, 1938. Then her first manager, Father Felix Lasoń, Jesuit, celebrated the first Mass in Polish broadcast on air and broadcast the first broadcast for listeners in Poland. Since then, broadcasts in Polish on Vatican Radio have been systematically started. As it turned out, the importance of Vatican Radio increased even more, besides for Poland and Poles, during the upcoming war. Among others, information about the terrible face of Nazi and russian occupations was provided.
After the war, Vatican Radio played a function as the voice of the Church and society in times of Stalinist and Communist persecution, and besides informed the public about the life of the Church – for example about the conduct of the Second Vatican Council. Karol Wojtyła was a frequent guest of Vatican Radio.
AB, KAI
