Saint Raphael Kalinowski

He was born Joseph Kalinowski at Vilna, now Vilnius, on September 1, 1835, the son of Andrew Kalinowski and Josephine Polonska, Catholic nobles. ¹³ The Washington Province of the Discalced Carmelite friars says he lost his mother early but grew up in a warm Christian home, where "To be a Catholic and to be a Pole" summed up his youth. ⁴ He studied at the Institute for Nobles at Vilna, where his father taught, and finished with the highest distinction. ¹

The sources tell his further studies differently. The Holy See's biography sends him for two years, 1851 and 1852, to an agricultural school at Hory-Horky, and then from 1853 to 1857 to the Academy of Military Engineering at St. Petersburg, where he took his engineering degree and the rank of lieutenant and was named a lecturer in mathematics. ¹ The Carmelite General Curia says simply that he studied at the military academy in St. Petersburg; the Washington Province says he went there at sixteen to study agronomy, and joined the army as an engineering officer after graduating. ³⁴ In 1859, the Holy See says, he worked on the design of the Kursk-Kiev-Odessa railway; the Carmelite Nuns in Britain describe it as the railway between Kursk and Odessa. ¹⁵

He had drifted from the faith in St. Petersburg. ⁴ The Washington Province tells how he found it again: in Warsaw, being treated for poor health, he became friends with a young woman whose faith moved him, and when he asked his sister for a crucifix to give a cousin bound for exile in Siberia, she agreed on condition that he go to confession. He went, and said of it afterward, "It was an exhilarating experience." ⁴

When the Polish insurrection against Russian rule broke out in 1863, he resigned from the Russian forces. ¹ He expected it to fail. The General Curia says he knew it could not succeed and joined it to help his compatriots and to prevent as much bloodshed as he could. ³ John Paul II, at the canonization, quoted him as saying, in words translated here from the Italian, "the homeland needs sweat, not blood"; seeing others ready to fight, he felt bound to offer his own life as well, and took part in the work of the insurgent government at Vilnius. ²

The Holy See says he accepted the post of Minister of War for the region of Vilna. ¹ The Carmelite Nuns in Britain add that he took the post on condition that he would never have to impose the death penalty, a detail none of the other sources gives. ⁵ He was arrested, on March 24, 1864 according to the Holy See, in March according to the General Curia, or in June according to the Carmelite Nuns in Britain. ¹³⁵ He was condemned to death, and the sentence was commuted to ten years of hard labor in Siberia. ¹²³

He set out with a crucifix and The Imitation of Christ, and the journey took nine months before he reached the shores of Lake Baikal. ³ The Washington Province describes barracks of one or two hundred prisoners sleeping on wooden planks in the cold, and says he gave away money and food and often went hungry himself; it places him in the salt mines, where the other sources speak only of forced labor. ¹³⁴ The Holy See credits him with teaching his fellow exiles the spirit of prayer, serenity and hope, along with material help. ¹

He wrote home asking for help for others. The General Curia quotes one letter: "I write it clearly, poverty here is great; to find money in the homeland is always easier than in Siberia." ³ In another, given by the Washington Province, he wrote: "God empties my heart of all natural attachment, probably to fill it with things more pure, of which nothing surpasses the desire to do good to my neighbor." ⁴ It was in Siberia, it says, that he first felt drawn to religious life. ⁴

He was freed in 1874. ¹ The General Curia dates his release to February 2, 1874, and says he was forbidden to return to live in Lithuania. ³

He became tutor to the young Prince August Czartoryski and lived mostly in Paris. ¹³ The Holy See says his influence led the prince to his own vocation; Czartoryski was received into the Salesians by John Bosco himself in 1887. ¹ The Holy See called him Venerable in 1991, and the Washington Province records that John Paul II beatified him in 2004. ¹⁴ Through a cousin of the prince, a Carmelite nun in Kraków, Kalinowski came to the writings of Teresa of Jesus and John of the Cross. ⁴

He entered the Discalced Carmelites at Graz, in Austria, and took the name Raphael of Saint Joseph. ¹³ The General Curia gives the date as July 15, 1877, with first vows on November 26, 1878, and solemn vows on November 27, 1881; the Washington Province gives his entry as November 26, 1877. ³⁴ He studied theology in Hungary and was ordained a priest at Czerna, near Kraków, on January 15, 1882. ¹³ John Paul II noted that he began Carmelite life at forty-two. ²

Within a year of his ordination he was given responsibilities of government, and the General Curia credits him with reorganizing the order and its secular branch in Poland. ³ The Carmelite Nuns in Britain say restoring the Discalced Carmelites in Poland was his dream, and that he founded the community at Wadowice in 1889. ⁵ He wrote the history of Carmel in Poland, and in 1906 took charge of the college of theology at Wadowice. ³⁴

He was above all a confessor. John Paul II said he gave many hours to that humble apostolate and was valued as a confessor and spiritual director. ² The Washington Province says he sat so often in cold, damp confessionals that he was called "the martyr of the confessional", and quotes a nun who had to begin her novitiate again under him. ⁴ He worked for the reunion of the Orthodox with the Catholic Church, trusting, in the pope's words, to the intercession of the Virgin they too venerate, and the Carmelite Nuns in Britain say Orthodox as well as Catholic Christians sought him out as a director. ¹²⁵

He was also, according to the Washington Province, an early disciple of Thérèse of Lisieux, whose autobiography he translated into Polish "before it was published in any other language". ⁴

Worn out by work and suffering, he died at Wadowice, in the monastery he had founded, on November 15, 1907, and was buried at Czerna. ¹ The Washington Province gives his last words as "Jesus, Mary, my God, my God", and notes that November 15 is the Carmelite commemoration of all the order's dead; he had written that as a boy he dreamed of dying on All Souls Day. ⁴

His cause opened in Kraków in 1934. ¹ John Paul II declared his virtues heroic on October 11, 1980, and after approving a cure attributed to him, beatified him in Kraków on June 22, 1983. ¹ A second cure, of a young child, was approved on July 10, 1990, and he was canonized in Rome on November 17, 1991. ¹³ The pope recalled that he had spoken at the tomb in Czerna on November 15, 1966, and said that Raphael was the second insurgent of 1863, after Brother Albert Chmielowski, to be declared a saint. ² ICS Publications and the Washington Province both call him the first Discalced Carmelite friar canonized since John of the Cross. ⁴⁶

The Discalced Carmelite General Curia says he "is invoked as patron of Siberians, educators, railway workers, engineers and the youth". ³ The same page says he came back from Siberia convinced that the young needed particular attention, since it is at that age that learning forms the person. ³ No source consulted for this page names him a patron of Poland.

His feast is November 19. ³⁴⁵ He died on November 15, which is not his feast day. ¹³ The sources that give November 19 do not say why that date was chosen.

He joined a rising he believed was hopeless, and, by John Paul II's account, said the country needed sweat rather than blood before he went to share the danger with those who had chosen to fight. ² The sources do not pretend the choice was simple, and the sentence that followed was real.

Siberia did not make him bitter. He used it to look after other prisoners and wrote home for money that was not for himself. ³⁴ When he wrote that God was emptying his heart of every natural attachment, it was from a prison barracks. ⁴

Most of his priesthood was spent in confessionals, which leaves little for a biographer. ²⁴ The General Curia sums up his teaching as reconciliation: that a person can forgive only by knowing he has been forgiven. ³