Growing up in occupied Poland, Danuta Kropidlowski learned the true power of prayer — and has never taken it for granted
STERLING HEIGHTS — When Danuta Kropidlowski was a young girl growing up in war-torn Poland, she would watch her mother sit in the corner of her bedroom and pray the rosary. Her prayer book was so worn from frequent use that the pages were brown.
One time, the rosary broke, and Danuta, in her child-like desire to have the rosary within her always, decided to swallow the blue beads.
Now 85 years old, Danuta lives in Town Village of Sterling Heights, an independent senior living facility, and every Thursday, with her rich Polish accent, she leads the rosary for a group of 30 to 50 people in one of the facility's common areas.
Danuta began leading the rosary in 2016. Her group started small, with seven to 11 people per gathering, but Danuta’s tenacity and her pursuit of the fellow residents made the group grow. At its peak, the group had 53 in attendance.
As Danuta sat with Detroit Catholic, residents would peer through the door, only to be met with a warm greeting from Danuta and a query as to whether or not they would attend the rosary that day.
“I get so many people by hunting like Jesus (did),” Danuta laughed. “I asked three or four times; I am knocking on their door, and I say, 'You have not come to the rosary in a while.'”
Danuta’s charm and persistence bring people to the group, and she has even managed to attract some non-Catholic residents. She says she is not afraid to tell people about the rosary because many don’t know how powerful it can be.
Kropidlowski began leading the rosary in 2016. Her group started small, but Danuta’s tenacity and her pursuit of the fellow residents made the group grow.
Despite how well attended the event is now, Danuta worries about who will step in to lead the rosary if she passes away.
“I pray for everyone, and I tell them I pray for them every day,” Danuta said. “But I tell them they have to be careful, they have to watch and they have to pray.”
And if Danuta says she will pray for you, it’s a lifetime guarantee, a visiting friend said. Danuta prays daily and says not one, but 12 rosaries every single day.
One year, after finding out that St. Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio) said 27 rosaries a day, Danuta challenged herself to do the same.
“God loves when we say the rosary. When he hears one 'Hail Mary,' He is very happy,” she said. She encourages others to pray the rosary and keeps a stash of about 20 in her room at all times, plus several in her pockets and around her neck so that she can share her favorite “weapon” with others.
“It is the best weapon against the devil because the devil is working overtime, and we have to be strong, and this makes you strong,” Danuta asserted.
But her prayer life doesn’t stop there. She makes time for the “short and powerful” Divine Mercy Chaplet and she loves to sing because, as she paraphrased St. Augustine’s famous quote, “singing is double prayer.”
Once a Pole, always a Pole
After leading the rosary, Danuta stood in front of her friends and a Detroit Catholic reporter and sang songs both in English and Polish — the latter to honor the memory of a fellow resident who had recently passed away and whose husband was in attendance for the rosary that day.
“I will always speak Polish,” Danuta said, and she said while many people struggle to understand her, others call her accent part of her “charm.”
Danuta lived in Poland during times of occupation — namely the German occupation during World War II and the subsequent USSR occupation — when faith was under attack.
“They wanted to take our country from the map. It was torture,” she said. “We had only one radio station, no rosary, no Catholic school, no nothing. It was bad at that time.”
️Her family continued to pray during this time, and her mother, a very strict Catholic, made sure her children went to church and prayed the rosary. Danuta recounted a time when her mother was arrested for defending her faith; someone had broken the holy water font in their church, and Danuta's mother spoke up.
“She protested and started screaming and crying, and they put her in prison for three days,” Danuta said. “They arrested her because she loved Jesus so much.”
Although Danuta says she left Poland long ago, her love for her country of birth is palpable, as is her love of St. John Paul the Great — Poland’s pope — of whom she speaks with reverence, love and complete trust.
“John Paul II, my Holy Father, my best one — he is going to be 100 years old in May this year,” she said. “He changed the world, and I love him and I pray to him and I always ask him to help me and help our world. So everything is going to be beautiful.”
And although she loves every mystery of the rosary, and she alternates between each one so that the Thursday group has a chance to say them all, she especially loves the Luminous mysteries, which were installed by her pope.
The rosary is truly a staple in Danuta's life: she sleeps with the rosary, has a rosary in every pocket as well as in her bed.
Danuta’s rosary ministry doesn’t stop there, though. Every Tuesday she leads the dementia patients in a rosary. The residents with dementia are so full of joy, she said. They sing with her and shake and kiss her hands.
“Good joy makes me so tired, and sometimes after the rosary I am tired,” she said, but this is her joy as well as her job. “God tells me to do it, so I am doing it.”
And the rosary is truly a staple in her life: she sleeps with the rosary, has a rosary in every pocket as well as in her bed.
“Rosary is like a letter to heaven, a big letter,” Danuta said. “If we say more rosaries, we are closer to heaven. Heaven is very far away from us. Very far — I heard one time (it's) millions of miles away, so we need a lot of rosaries.”
