Nycz was educated at the primary school in Stara Wieś; Lyceum of Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Czechowice-Dziedzice where he graduated in 1967; he then entered the Major Seminary of Kraków.

He received his episcopal consecration on the following 4 June from Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, with Archbishops Jerzy Ablewicz and Stanisław Nowak as co-consecrators.

On 26 November 1999, he was named chairman of the Committee for Catholic Education; his main interest was to seek ways to find the opportunities offered by schools for catechetical activities and to search for forms of parish catechesis.

As chairman of the Commission for Education of the Conference of the Polish Episcopate, the center of his activities was adapting the Polish catechesis to the post-Vatican II catechetical documents of the Church, especially the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the General Directory for Catechesis; and to correlate the teaching of religion in the school with the requirements of the reformed schools He was appointed Bishop of Koszalin-Kołobrzeg on 9 June 2004.

[1] On 3 March 2007, Pope Benedict XVI named Nycz, who was then on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to succeed Stanisław Wielgus as Archbishop of Warsaw,[2] after Wielgus had abruptly resigned on 7 January after admitting to he had collaborated with the Służba Bezpieczeństwa, the Communist secret police.