Angelus News | June 3, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 11

KAMIL
ZIOLKOWSKI
Age: 27
Hometown: Jelenia Góra, Poland
Home parish: St. Alphonsus Church, East LA
Parish assignment: St. Joseph Church,
Hawthorne
Kamil Ziolkowski’s journey to the priesthood is an ode
to joy.
The 27-year-old native of Poland described himself
as a “JP II vocation,” JP being his countryman, St. Pope
John Paul II, who once wrote that the Church, the saints,
and the Virgin Mary provided “the model, the strength
and the joy needed to live a life in accordance with God’s
commandments and the beatitudes of the Gospel.”
For Ziolkowski, who was 11 when the pope died, the full
Ziolkowski (left) during a sport fishing trip off the California coast.
Ziolkowski with his parents during a visit to Griffith Observatory.
impact of those words hit him years later as a seminarian,
while serving as a hospital chaplain.
“I would see how the priest assists families, assisting
patients in moments of sorrow: illness, death, anointing of
the sick,” he said. “And then I would see how they serve in
moments of joy: the birth of a child, couples that came to
the priest to bless their love and marriage, to be there when
their children are born, to be baptized, to be there when
the children make their first Communion.”
It was then he realized that to find the strength to journey
with people on their pilgrimage toward Christ, to serve
them in “moments of joy and moments of pain, to help
people with those moments in life, all that lead to the altar
of Christ,” one must serve with joy.
In fact, he said anyone considering a vocation should first
consider what he calls a “test of joy.” “Ask yourself if you’re
26 • ANGELUS • June 3, 2022