On Sunday, May 18, 2003, Pope John Paul II canonized two new Polish Saints who served the Church during the early decades of the twentieth century: Jozef Sebastian Pelczar, Bishop of Przemysl from 1920 to 1924, and Mother Ursula Ledóchowska, foundress of the Ursuline Sisters of the Heart of Jesus in Agony.
Each Blessed was beatified during one of the Holy Father’s pastoral visits to Poland. The Pope declared his compatriots Saints during Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on his birthday.
Jozef Sebastian Pelczar was born in 1842 in the small Sub-Carpathian town of Korczyna in southeastern Poland. A gifted child of a pious family, he served Mass as a six-year-old. His parents sent him to the district school in Rzeszow. As a young student there he wrote in his diary, “Earthly ideals are fading away. I see the ideal of life in sacrifice, and the ideal of sacrifice in priesthood.”
He entered the Major Seminary in Przemysl and was ordained for that diocese in 1864. After a short assignment as a curate in Sambor, he was sent to Rome to earn doctoral degrees in theology and canon law. At the same time Fr. Pelczar independently studied the ascetical writings of the Church Fathers. He spent his vacation one summer in Genazzano, where the miraculous image of the Mother of Good Counsel is enshrined. Many young priests, Don Bosco among them, made pilgrimages to that place to entrust their future ministry to Our Lady. In Genazzano Fr. Pelczar wrote his first book, Zycie duchowne [On the Spiritual Life] , which became a widely distributed classic.
Fr. Pelczar had a brilliant academic career, first as a seminary professor in Przemysl, and later as a faculty member, dean of the Theology Department and eventually Rector at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. (Fr. Karol Wojtyla continued his studies in philosophy at that same university during a sabbatical in 1951).
Fr. Jozef Pelczar also did pastoral work with the St. Vincent de Paul Society and as president of the Society for the Education of the People. He founded the Congregation of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Krakow in 1894, in order to promote devotion to the Sacred Heart and to help working women, children, and the infirm
In 1899 Jozef Sebastian Pelczar was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of the diocese of Przemysl, and the following year he became the Ordinary. During his 25 years as a bishop he made regular pastoral visits to the parishes. He was especially concerned about the spiritual and intellectual formation of the clergy, being convinced that only holy priests can carry on a truly fruitful apostolate. Despite unfavorable political conditions he held three diocesan synods. He also worked to implement the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, by establishing nurseries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and schools.
Bishop Pelczar shepherded his flock through the difficult years of the First World War, continuing after Poland regained its independence in 1918. He died a holy death on March 28, 1924. Pope John Paul II beatified him in Rzeszow in 1991, during his fourth pastoral visit to Poland.
Julia Maria Ledóchowska was born in Austria in 1865, the daughter of a Polish count and a Swiss noblewoman. Her large family was a school of saints. Her uncle, Cardinal Mieczyslaw Ledóchowski, the Primate of Poland, was persecuted and imprisoned for his opposition to the policies of the Prussian Kulturkampf [“culture war”]. Her older sister, Blessed Maria Teresa Ledóchowska, founded the Missionary Sisters of S. Peter Claver and is affectionately known as the “Mother of Black Africa”.
Julia Maria moved with her family to Poland when her father became ill in 1883. He died soon after, having given his blessing to her plans to enter the Convent of the Ursuline Sisters in Krakow. Julia took the religious name of “Maria Ursula of Jesus” and devoted herself to the care and education of youth. She organized the first residence in Poland for female university students.
As prioress of the convent after the turn of the century, she received a request to found a boarding school for Polish girls in St. Petersburg, Russia, then a cosmopolitan, industrial city. The pastor of St. Catherine’s Church, Msgr. Constantine Budkiewicz (a Polish nobleman), extended the invitation, and Pope St. Pius X gave his approval. So in 1907 Mother Ursula went with another sister to Russia to found a new convent and work among the Catholic immigrants. Although the nuns wore lay clothing, they were under constant surveillance by the secret police.
At the beginning of World War I, Mother Ursula was expelled from Russia as an Austrian national. The Monsignor would be martyred by the Bolsheviks, and St. Petersburg would eventually be renamed “Leningrad”.
Mother Ursula fled to neutral Sweden. She organized relief efforts for war victims and charitable programs for Polish people living in exile, founded a monthly Catholic newspaper, and made extensive ecumenical contacts with Lutherans in Scandinavia.
In 1920 M. Ursula, her sisters, and dozens of orphans (the children of immigrants) made their way back to Poland. During the tumultuous years that they had spent abroad, the growing Ursuline community had developed a distinctive charism and apostolate. Therefore Mother Ursula founded her own Congregation, the Ursuline Sisters of the Heart of Jesus in Agony. Her brother Vladimir, who had become Superior General of the Jesuits, helped to obtain Vatican approval of the new institute, which was to be devoted to “the education and training of children and youth, and service to the poorest and the oppressed among our brethren” (from the Constitutions).
Between the two world wars, M. Ursula and her nuns taught catechism in the enormous factory town of Lodz. She organized a “Eucharistic Crusade” among the working-class children, encouraging those little “Knights of the Crusade” to write to Pope Pius XI in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination. Some children wrote that they loved the Holy Father as much as their own parents. Others spoke of receiving Our Lord in their First Holy Communion, of wanting to be His apostles and missionaries. One child wrote: “How beautiful it would be if the Holy Father were to come to Poland.” Mother Ursula Ledóchowska died on May 29, 1939 at the general house of her community in Rome.
Pope John Paul II beatified her during his second pastoral visit to Poland, in 1983, the Holy Year of Redemption and the sixth centenary of Our Lady of Jasna Gora, in the city of Poznan, with schoolchildren from Lodz in attendance.
While visiting his homeland in June 1983, the Holy Father spoke the following words: “It is the Saints and the Blessed who show us the path to the victory that God achieves in human history. Every individual is called to a similar victory. Every son and daughter of Poland who follows the example of her saints and beati. Their elevation to the altars in their homeland is the sign of that strength which is more powerful than any human weakness and more powerful than any situation, even the most difficult, not excluding the arrogant use of power.”
Less than a decade later, in 1991, when Pope John Paul II returned to Poland to beatify Bishop Pelczar, Solidarity had prevailed, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the Catholic hierarchy had been restored in most Eastern European nations.
“Happy Birthday, Holy Father!” – from Jozef and Ursula.
Michael J. Miller translated the books entitled New Saints and Blesseds of the Catholic Church Vols. 1, 2, 3, and Married Saints and Blesseds for Ignatius Press.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
