Alfonz Paulen was born on 26 January 1913, in the village of Male Bedzany, district of Toposchany, to Ján and Anna Števicova, who before Alfonz was born, during a pilgrimage to the shrine of Mariazell, asked the Virgin for the grace of a son who would be a priest.
Born into the simplicity of an agricultural and pastoral environment, in his early childhood he saw his father, sister and one of his two brothers die, being raised not without difficulty by his young widowed mother. He fell ill with tuberculosis himself and had to move to the Tatra Mountains for treatment. In the meantime, he studied and felt the vocation implored by his mother arise within him, so much so that he entered the seminary in Trnava in 1931.
He spent five years there, eagerly and happily studying, and finally being ordained a priest on 17 May 1936. As a first assignment he was assigned as chaplain in the village of Leopoldov, where he taught the children at the local chool and prepared them for First Communion, showing them particular tenderness and attention. After completing his military service in Prague, in 1938 he became parish priest in Sološnica, being appreciated above all as a confessor.
In 1939 he was sent to the parish of Kolpachy, (now Banský Studenec), in a region of Slovakia at the time that was very poor, and often lacking in food. Supported by several families in the town, Fr Paulen spent more than 8 years there and, in addition to serving through his ministry, he dedicated himself to the poor and suffering, and especially to children, remembering his past when his father died and the difficult years of hardship and illness.
When World War II broke out, Fr Paulen, who knew both German and Russian, emerged as a city authority and it was also thanks to him and his diplomacy that there was no loss of life during German reprisals on the citizens of Kolpachy, guilty of having participated in the Slovak national insurrection in 1944. Thanks to his authority, Fr Paulen managed to help several inhabitant to escape and he himself welcomed and hid fugitive partisans in more than one circumstance.
After the war he remained in Kolpachy for two more years, performing his duties as a pastor and teacher, supporting the reconstruction of the local chapel, organising missions and preparing the children for Confirmation – the last confirmations to be celebrated there until 1993.
While Fr Paulen, at the end of 1947, was assigned as parish priest in Šenkvice, in fact the communist regime was being established in the country. In this new context he tried to act with even greater apostolic commitment: he taught religion in schools, renewed missions for the people and retreats for parishioners, saw to encouraging publishing and devoted much energy to supporting the various Catholic groups in the parish.
When his assistant parish priest Salesian Fr Titus Zeman, due to the restrictions imposed on priestly formation, began to organise clandestine escapes to Italy, he too began to collaborate. For this act of love he was also imprisoned, and after almost three years of deprivation and torture, and without adequate care, he became seriously ill. He died on 10 April 1954, after a lengthy illness.
In the last hours of his life he whispered to Fr Zeman that he had thought several times of entering the Jesuits, but that having suffered so much in prison with the Salesians, he asked to be admitted to his Congregation. "I would like to die as a Salesian of Don Bosco and under the protection of the Help of Christians" was his request.
On 11 April 2023, the Archbishop of Bratislava, Stanislav Zvolensky, opened the diocesan inquiry into the process of Beatification and Canonisation of the Servant of God Alfonz Paulen.
