Saint Zygmunt Gorazdowski

He was born at Sanok on November 1, 1845. ¹² The Holy See's English biography locates the town in Ukraine and its Polish biography in Poland; the two biographies are separate texts and disagree in several small details. ¹² He was the second of seven children, according to the Polish breviary site brewiarz.pl, and spent his first months on his grandmother's estate, narrowly escaping death in the peasant uprising against the landowners of western Galicia in 1846. ⁶ It was while the family was in hiding, brewiarz.pl says, that he caught the tuberculosis that stayed with him for the rest of his life. ⁶

The English biography speaks only of a lung ailment, which did not stop the boy from helping others where he could. ¹ He went to school in Przemyśl. ¹⁶ In 1863, by brewiarz.pl's account, he ran away from the gymnasium to join the January Uprising against Russia, and returned home to finish his studies when it failed. ⁶ He then enrolled in law at the university in Lviv. ¹²

At the end of his second year he left law for the Latin Catholic seminary in Lviv. ¹² Ordination did not follow straight away. The Polish biography says his illness grew so serious that his ordination was held back, and quotes the memory of his fellow students, translated here: being refused ordination was a very painful blow, and he suffered in body and spirit, but did not lose his trust in God. ² After two years of treatment he was ordained in Lviv cathedral in 1871, on July 21 by the English biography and on July 25 by the Polish. ¹²⁶

For his first six years he was a curate and administrator in a string of country parishes: Tartaków, Wojniłów, Bukaczowce, Gródek Jagielloński and Żydaczów. ¹⁶ During an outbreak of cholera at Wojniłów he nursed the sick and dying and laid out the bodies of the dead with his own hands, despite the risk of infection. ¹² The Polish biography adds that even then Jews kissed his clothes, regarding him as a holy man. ²

John Paul II, beatifying him in 2001, said that the young priest at Wojnilow "remained in the memory of his contemporaries as a living sign of the merciful love of the Saviour." ⁵

He also wrote. His catechism, the Polish biography says, ran to more than fifty thousand copies, and he published books of advice for young men and women. ² brewiarz.pl records that the diocese of Przemyśl recommended his catechism for elementary schools as the most suitable textbook for teaching religion. ⁶

In 1877 he moved to Lviv, and he worked there for the rest of his life, first as a curate and administrator and then as pastor of the parish of St. Nicholas. ¹²⁷ As secretary of the Institute of Poor Christians he opened a house of voluntary work for homeless beggars, children among them, and the Polish biography quotes the house's own reports: many of the poor stopped begging and, with their dignity recovered, went back to a decent life. ²⁵ The people of Lviv took to calling him "ksiądz dziadów", the priest of the beggars, and the father of the poor. ²⁶⁷

He started a cheap people's kitchen where, in Niedziela's account, workers, students, schoolchildren and above all the poor of the city ate, about six hundred dinners a day; Saint Albert Chmielowski ate there whenever he was in Lviv. ²⁷ He opened a home for the incurably ill and for convalescents, which the Polish biography explains: a government rule discharged patients from the hospital after six weeks, whatever their condition, and he built somewhere for them to go. ¹² There was a boarding house for poor students of the teachers' seminary, and an institute for poor seminarians. ¹²

The work the Polish sources dwell on longest is the Institute of the Child Jesus, for single mothers and abandoned infants, which the Polish biography calls the first, and for many years the only, such house in Galicia. ²⁶ About three thousand children were saved there in his lifetime. ²⁶ brewiarz.pl describes how it worked: mothers with small children were given shelter, food and spiritual care free of charge, and abandoned babies were sent at a year old, at the institute's expense, to foster families in the countryside, where they stayed until they were six and sometimes for good. ⁶

His own house was the same. brewiarz.pl says beggars came to his rectory from all over the city because they knew he would not turn them away, though he lived poorly himself, ate very little and went about in a worn cassock and coat; when the sisters gave him new clothes, he gave them to the poor. ⁶ His confessional was always crowded, and he went to the homes of hardened sinners to urge them to confession. ⁶

To keep all this going he needed people who would stay. The Polish biography and Niedziela say he drew Franciscan tertiaries into the work, saw to their formation, and had them approved by the Church as a religious congregation. ²⁷ brewiarz.pl tells it differently: in 1882 he brought a community it calls the Siostrzyczki Ubogich, the Little Sisters of the Poor, from Tarnopol to run the soup kitchen, and they were the beginning of the congregation. ⁶ Its official founding date is February 17, 1884. ¹²

The English biography calls it the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, and the Polish one gives the same name; brewiarz.pl and Niedziela say that its original name was the Sisters of Mercy of St. Joseph. ¹²⁶⁷ Its motto, which the Polish biography says grew up within the community, is "Heart with God, hands at work". ²⁷ The sisters work today with the poor, the sick and the suffering, and in education; the English biography counts eight countries. ¹

Not all of his work was welcome. He founded a Polish-German Catholic school, handed to the Brothers of the Christian Schools, and, answering a papal call for cheap Catholic papers for ordinary people, a daily newspaper, the Gazeta Codzienna. ²⁶ Both met fierce opposition, the Polish biography says, and cost him suffering, misunderstanding and humiliation almost until his death. ² brewiarz.pl adds that he had the support of the Archbishop of Lviv, Józef Bilczewski, with whom he would later be beatified and canonized. ⁶

Near the end of his life, according to brewiarz.pl, a dangerous disease of the eyes threatened him with blindness. ⁶ He died in Lviv on January 1, 1920, in the congregation's mother house, and was buried in the Lychakiv cemetery. ¹⁶ The Polish biography gives what was said of him then, translated here: he was an eye to the blind, a foot to the lame, a father to the poor. ² John Paul II recalled that when he died he was acknowledged as "a true religious, even if he had no special vows". ⁵

His cause was opened in the archdiocese of Lviv in 1989. ²⁶ John Paul II beatified him at Lviv on June 26, 2001, together with Józef Bilczewski, and called him "a true pearl of the Latin clergy of this Archdiocese". ⁵ Benedict XVI canonized him on October 23, 2005, at the close of the Synod of Bishops and of the Year of the Eucharist, with Bilczewski, Alberto Hurtado, Gaetano Catanoso and Felix of Nicosia; Niedziela notes that it was the first canonization of that pontificate. ³⁶⁷ In the homily the pope said that "living Christ's offering urged him toward the sick, the poor and the needy." ³

None of the sources consulted names a patronage for him, so none is given here. ¹²⁶⁷ Speaking in Ukrainian to the pilgrims the day after the canonization, Benedict XVI entrusted the Church in Ukraine and the Ukrainian people "to the protection of these Patronal Saints", meaning Gorazdowski and Bilczewski together, and in Polish he entrusted the Church in Poland, and particularly its bishops and priests, to their protection. ⁴

The Holy See's Polish biography says his liturgical memorial is kept on June 26, the day John Paul II beatified him in 2001, and Niedziela says the Church in Poland remembers him on that day. ²⁷ brewiarz.pl adds that in other countries he is kept on January 1, the anniversary of his death. ⁶ The English biography gives January 1 only as the date he died. ¹

He was told he was too ill to be ordained, and for two years it looked as though that was the end of it. ² What followed was nearly half a century of work done by a man who never recovered his health. ¹⁶

Benedict XVI said he became known for "his devotion founded on the celebration and adoration of the Eucharist", and John Paul II spoke of his "ardent devotion to the Passion of Christ, a tender love of Mary Immaculate and a very special veneration for Saint Joseph". ³⁵ The motto that grew up among his sisters puts both halves together: heart with God, hands at work. ²

Much of what he built was practical to the point of being dull to describe: a kitchen, a workhouse, a boarding house, a system of foster families in the countryside. ²⁶ Benedict XVI told the Polish pilgrims that his desire was "To be all things for everyone in order to save at least one", and the Polish biography calls it his only desire. ²⁴

He also paid for it. The school and the newspaper brought him opposition and humiliation that, the Polish biography says, lasted almost until he died, and in his last years he was going blind. ²⁶ The Church holds him up as a saint of the poor without pretending the work came easily.