Stanislaw Marian Rylko was born in Andrychow, Malopolska region. He was ordained a priest in 1969 by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla. After studying in Krakow and Rome and working in the Krakow archdiocese, where he was, among other things, vice-rector of the seminary, he held various positions in the Vatican since 1987 until retirement. In 1995 he became secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity and titular bishop of Novika. He was appointed a cardinal in 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI.

From 2003 to 2016, he presided over the Pontifical Council for the Laity. He was also a member of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Congregation for Bishops, the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, and a member of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses.

He participated in the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis.

In 2017 he was appointed archpriest of the Basilica of Our Lady Major, and since 2018 he has been a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State.

In 2009, by order of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, he was awarded the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Rebirth of Poland and in 2015 Polish President Andrzej Duda awarded him the Grand Cross of the same order.

Cardinal Rylko is one of a number of prelates who have worked in the Roman Curia for decades. His career there lasted for thirty years. During this time he dedicated himself to serving the Church and very rarely gave interviews. His views on controversial topics are therefore largely unknown.

From his many years of work at the Pontifical Council for the Laity, one can conclude that the cardinal supports the development of lay movements in the Church, and has repeatedly said that not only clergy, but also lay missionaries are needed in evangelized countries.

“To be a missionary, a witness to the faith is an integral part of our Christian identity. The whole Church is missionary by its very nature. And in our time, the Church’s mission of evangelization faces many daunting challenges in the religious, social, cultural, economic and political fields,” he said in 2012 at the African Congress of the Laity.

Despite this commitment to the topic of the laity, he has never spoken on the Synod on Synodality. When it was convened the cardinal was no longer in office.

In dealing with the laity, the cardinal has devoted many of his addresses to defending the family and threats to the family posed by the modern world.¹“The Church constantly reminds us that marriage and the family are the most precious common good of every nation and society, so it is necessary to defend the family … it is especially necessary to take care to establish wise laws that respect the nature of marriage and the family, which do not destroy these institutions fundamental to human existence, but support them … “The betrayal of the truth about marriage and the family is the destruction of the living fabric of the nation and society,” he said. As the synod on the family approached, Cardinal Rylko said: “There are many prophets of calamity today who sing a requiem for Christian marriage and family, and therefore, what the family needs most today and what we expect from the Synod is ‘hope’ spelled with a capital H. We need hope built on the foundation of the magisterium of the Church, which through the centuries has shaped the model of marriage and family in light of the Gospel (…) This is the expectation not only of pastors, but above all of lay people. It is they who are largely tired of the confusion that has been created around the family.”

While he was still President of the Pontifical Council of the Laity, Cardinal Rylko emphasized the need for Catholic families to adhere fully to the teachings of the Gospel, despite the prevailing culture. “Many are choosing not to get married,” he said, “and there is a huge increase in the number of cohabiting couples and of people getting divorced. The gap is widening between the Church magisterium and the actual lives of the faithful. We are undoubtedly facing a dangerous post-modern cultural shift that threatens the fate of humankind. In our times it often happens that when the Church speaks out about the nature of family and marriage (union between a man and a woman) and its indissolubility, faithful and fruitful conjugal love and openness to life, it may seem like a voice ‘crying in the wilderness’ that is often contested, rejected and even ridiculed by the media. However this voice cannot and must not fail to be heard.”

Commenting on the Synod of Bishops on the Family, he said in 2014: “At this point, in the context of the Synod, there are some basic questions that Catholic spouses above all must ask: do I really live my marriage and family life according to God’s plan? Have I the courage to trust fully the Gospel of the family proclaimed by the magisterium of the Church? In spite of my limitations and my weakness, do I try to give witness to the beauty of marriage and the Christian family environment in which I live?  The pressure of post-modernity in this field is extremely strong and many give in to its destructive dictates. Unfortunately, even among the ranks of the baptized, attitudes of rejection (explicit or implicit) are now spreading like wildfire, as well as choices that stand in stark contrast to the Church’s magisterium. This brings much suffering to married couples and especially to children because of failed marriages.”

The cardinal also noted that civil law should protect the family, saying: “It is necessary to guard the family, to defend it in the face of so many threats today. Particular care must be taken to establish wise laws that respect the nature of marriage and the family, which do not destroy but support these institutions fundamental to human existence. Unfortunately, we know that this is often not the case. We cannot remain silent and indifferent in this area.”

Cardinal has Rylko stressed that “faith is not a private matter,” offering a grave diagnosis of  the ills plaguing the Western world. Recalling Benedict XVI, he said we are witnessing the death of faith in modern man, who has become weaned from contact with God, and thus has lost sensitivity to Him. According to the cardinal, “the best response to this widespread lack of certainty and reference points are movements that form Christians with a solid and mature faith.”

On another occasion, the cardinal said: “The modern world today is experiencing a profound crisis. Widespread relativism breeds a void in the field of values, meaning, truth. There are no permanent and certain points of reference; everything is fluid. As a result, there is a growing number of people who are uprooted, people who have lost the foundations of their own existence somewhere along the way. (…) there is a clear and strong message addressed to young people: the foundation necessary for building the house of one’s life exists, and it is the living person of Jesus Christ! Only in Him can a person find the answer to the deepest questions, anxieties and desires of his heart.”

Cardinal Ryłko also noted that “the great drama of our time is the exclusion of God from the horizon of human life which is happening for the first time in history on such a scale.” He lamented that God is denied the right to be present, especially in public life. We are at a moment,” he said “when the fate of our civilization is being decided: whether it will be a civilization of life or a civilization of death.” The cardinal also expressed his belief that “humanism without God becomes inhuman humanism, sooner or later turning against man.”

At the same time, the Polish cardinal has repeatedly said that Christians are called to bear witness in today’s world to the sanctity of human life and to God.

“Today too much attention is paid to the so-called ‘prophets of doom,’ as Paul VI used to call them. There is a proliferation of analyses and diagnoses of the situation of faith in today’s society breathing great pessimism or even some kind of catastrophism.” He said he was not denying that problems exist, but believes “that we cannot be blind to the good that is happening in the Church and the world.”

“The Holy Spirit has not stopped working in our time at all! Church movements show that, despite the progressive process of secularization, in the lives of many laymen today there has been a great ‘qualitative leap’ when it comes to living the faith, the radicalism of evangelical choices, or involvement in the Church’s evangelization mission. There is no shortage of signs of authentic Christian maturity and testimonies of true holiness among the laity. There is also a new generation of young people growing, often referred to as the ‘John Paul II generation,’ who are not satisfied with the consumerist lifestyle imposed by modern culture, who are looking for the deeper meaning of their existence and find it in Christ, in the Gospel, in the Church.”

Cardinal Rylko is not generally regarded as papabile for the upcoming conclave mainly due to his advanced age. However, if he were to become pope, it is conceivable that he would focus on issues affecting the laity, especially the family. He also sees threats to the Catholic faith coming from the world and its depraved “modern culture.”

As a Polish hierarch influenced by the thought of John Paul II, with whom he worked closely, he would certainly advance many aspects of the vision of the Polish Pope.² Ryłko once said of Pope St. John Paul II: “Starting from my clerical days, at the seminary in Krakow, my entire priestly life has been connected with the person of Cardinal Wojtyla and later the Holy Father John Paul II. I consider this a great gift of Providence, for which I constantly thank God and constantly ask myself with anxiety how much I have been able to use it in my priestly and episcopal life… Not only did he grant me all the ordinations, including the fullness of the priesthood in the episcopate, but he was above all an unsurpassed model of a priest and shepherd passionate about Christ and the Church. The Second Vatican Council speaks of the ‘sacramental fatherhood’ of a bishop towards his priests: in this sense, in the person of John Paul II I have always seen a true Father. And I consider the three-year period in the Vatican Secretariat of State, when I worked directly with John Paul II, to be the most important in my priestly life….”