When Father Witold Kaczmarzyk arrived at Christ on the Mountain Parish in Lakewood, Colorado, earlier this year, he inherited a parish unknown by many in the Denver Archdiocese and arrived with a mission from his archbishop: to breathe new life into the community.
Kaczmarzyk's solution involved an electric scooter, a little comedy, and a willingness to step outside his comfort zone by using social media — all in the hope of helping more people encounter Jesus Christ.
Born and raised in Ostrow Wielkopolski, Poland, Kaczmarzyk lived there with his parents and younger brother until he was 25, after which he moved to the United States to attend seminary.
He remembers first thinking about becoming a priest at the age of 6. However, as he grew up, he realized that being a priest meant sacrificing having a family. After high school, he went to college in Warsaw and planned to become a nuclear physicist.
"I went to like a Polish MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] in Warsaw. And that's actually what I called my Damascus — like Paul riding to Damascus, I was riding on a train to Warsaw to pursue my dreams and that's when God caught me," he told EWTN News.
When he arrived at the university, Kaczmarzyk met several people who began to encourage him to pray, read the Bible, and get more involved in his faith.
"Slowly this desire since childhood came back to the surface level," he said. "And I kind of felt weird because my love for physics, for science, was going down, and then my love for God was increasing day by day."
After six months, Kaczmarzyk dropped out of college and entered the seminary. Originally, he felt called to become a missionary priest, with the desire "to be like the apostles."
"I didn't want to be just the boring priest of a parish in Poland. That's not me. I wanted to go into Africa, Asia, other cultures, languages, [and] dangers," he said. "I told my parents I want to become a missionary… Well, my parents thought I was crazy. Even my dad was like, 'You might get killed,' and I'm like, 'That's even better. I will be a martyr, that's an express path to heaven, sign me up.'"
While Kaczmarzyk did not end up becoming a missionary priest, two years into his time at the diocesan seminary in Poland he still had the desire to go somewhere else. After an online search looking for Polish seminaries outside of Poland, Kaczmarzyk ended up transferring to Sts. Cyril and Methodius Seminary in Orchard Lake, Michigan. He was then invited by the Archdiocese of Denver to become one of its diocesan priests, and in 2019 he was ordained to the priesthood.
New assignment brings opportunity
Kaczmarzyk's new tenure at Christ on the Mountain Parish is his first as a pastor. He had previously been a parochial vicar at several other parishes in the archdiocese. When he received the assignment from Archbishop Samuel Aquila, former archbishop of Denver, he was told to help get people back into the Church and on fire for Christ.
"I pray my Holy Hour at 6 a.m. every morning and I'm just sitting with my cup of coffee and my pj's in front of the Blessed Sacrament in the rectory and I'm like, 'Jesus, I need your help because, I don't know, I mean, comparing my parish to five loaves and two fish, feels like not much, but you can do something with it,'" he recalled.
This became Kaczmarzyk's daily prayer. Then, he came across the parish's Facebook page.
"It only had like 200 followers. No one knew the password from my staff," he said. "They're like, 'Father, there was a girl who set it up but she's gone and no one knows the password.' So, I'm like, 'Well, let's call this Project Lazarus and see what happens because it's right now dead and I need to ask Jesus to resurrect it.'"
Thinking he could use social media as a way to engage with his parishioners and potentially attract more people to the parish, Kaczmarzyk began to post. But it wasn't until he posted a picture of himself riding an electric scooter to Mass that the page took off.
Kaczmarzyk explained that the rectory is half a mile away from the parish. Instead of driving his car, he wanted to save gas money so he bought the cheapest electric scooter he could find on Amazon and began riding it to Mass on Sundays — even while wearing his cassock.
One day after Mass, a parishioner took a picture of Kaczmarzyk on the scooter and sent it to him. He then made a simple post on Facebook with the photo. The next morning, he had an inbox full of positive messages, even emails from the local Denver news channels wanting to speak with him.
"I'm like, why are we excited about a priest riding a scooter? I'm always telling people we have 2,000 years of history, so many saints … I'm just riding my scooter and that's more popular than Thomas Aquinas? I'm like, 'What are you doing, people?'"
After that, Kaczmarzyk began to realize the potential social media could have to reach more people with the message of the Gospel and continued to share photos and videos on the parish's Facebook page and on his own Instagram and TikTok pages.
Kaczmarzyk is also well known for using humor during his homilies. At his previous parish, he even headlined a sold-out comedy show event for the parishioners alongside the parish's pastor.
The priest now combines his sense of humor with the truths the Catholic Church teaches to make funny yet applicable reels and memes, and more serious content such as his one-minute homily video series.
But behind the humorous videos and creative outreach is a priest who admits that putting himself out there doesn't come naturally.
"I'm an introvert, a classic one," Kaczmarzyk said.
However, his desire to bring people closer to Christ has forced him to push himself beyond his comfort zone, he said. Whether he's posting short videos online, hosting comedy shows, or gathering parishioners for informal conversations over a pint, he sees each one as an opportunity to reach people who might not otherwise walk through his church doors.
"Social media, it helps because you have so many people on each platform, people maybe who do not practice their faith anymore, and if I use my humor, it helps," he said. "It's not like a serious message all the time … When I do some kind of funny skit or whatever, then people see first of all, I'm normal, I'm human, I can be funny and then maybe they want to come to church on Sunday because that's the goal, of course — for people to come back to the Church, to Jesus — not to me."
He added: "The main goal is, of course, to bring people in so they come to Jesus, they meet him through the sacraments, specifically the Eucharist [and] confession. So social media is great tool, but it's just a tool; it's not the end of all of it. It's just the tool to bring people in so they can fall in love with God."
