he has been a priest for thirty-two years. While growing up in deep socialism, he first wanted to be a soldier, but after a fight with the police he was banned from studying at the university, so he went to dig coal. After a few months, the decision to become a priest ripened in him. He was also admitted to the theological faculty as a “problem”.
Leo’s destiny is the story of a boy who grew up in his grandfather’s blacksmith shop in his native Silesia. The whole family from the mother’s side – great-grandfather, grandfather, uncle, brother – were or are blacksmiths. For the first time, his grandfather took him to the workshop fifty years ago, when he was still a preschooler, to help him with the bellows. There he found a passion for working with iron, to which he only returned as a priest after several decades, when he was looking for a way to save his spiritual life.
Leo and I are not alone in this
“Manual work helps me cope with the traumas of the civil war experienced during the mission in Angola and Congo, but also with the eternal complaints of some parishioners that I am not a ‘conservative’ enough priest. According to their ideas, of course. I’m tired of people’s constant expectations of what a good priest should be, and how he should be immediately available to everyone whenever he wants. I wouldn’t be able to do my spiritual service without working with a hammer, furnace and iron,” the sympathetic priest confides his feelings to us shortly after welcoming us to the parish garden, from where he calls us to the kitchen to drink a quick coffee.
boris németh The parish garden in Lamač, where Leonard has a furnace made by himself.
He cooks it for us, but he only drinks clean water himself. In a few minutes, he runs to the Lamač church of St. Margaret. According to the liturgical rules of the Catholic Church, every Christian must fast at least one hour before receiving the Eucharist, with the exception of drinking water.
His hands are still a little dirty from black soot from frequent forging. He is currently completing a large altar cross with the corpus of Christ for his church. The interior of the parish church in Lamač from the fifties of the twentieth century is gradually supplemented with hand-forged objects – candlesticks, crosses, reliquaries. Father Leo does not feel even a hint of clericalism – superiority over “ordinary” people with ordinary problems.
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