Blessed August Czartoryski

Blessed August Czartoryski was a Polish prince born in exile who gave up his inheritance to become a Salesian and a priest. Ill with tuberculosis, he died after barely a year of priesthood. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on April 8, the day of his death.

He was born on August 2, 1858, in Paris, the firstborn son of Prince Władysław Czartoryski and Maria Amparo, daughter of Queen Maria Christina of Spain. His family lived in exile and from the Hôtel Lambert in Paris worked for the rebirth of Poland, then divided among the partitioning powers. When August was six, his mother died of tuberculosis. He contracted the same disease himself and never regained his health.

Court life held no attraction for him. For three years, from 1874 to 1877, his tutor was Józef Kalinowski, who had been exiled to Siberia, later became a Discalced Carmelite, and is today Saint Raphael Kalinowski. From him we know that August sought his path with his eyes fixed on Saint Aloysius Gonzaga and Saint Stanislaus Kostka.

The turning point was his meeting with Saint John Bosco. In May 1883 the founder of the Salesians celebrated Mass in the chapel of the Hôtel Lambert, and August served at the altar. From then on he saw in him the father of his soul and traveled to Turin for advice and for retreats. He wanted to become a Salesian, but Don Bosco hesitated for a long time over whether to accept him. Pope Leo XIII settled the doubts: after speaking with August, he told him to repeat to Don Bosco that it was the Pope’s will that he receive him.

In 1887 August renounced his rights in favor of his younger brothers and began the novitiate. On November 24, in the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin, he received the cassock from the hands of Don Bosco, who died two months later. He made his religious vows on October 2, 1888, at the founder’s tomb in Valsalice. When his family kept trying to persuade him to come back, he wrote that he had made his vows in full freedom and with great joy.

Because of his illness he studied theology on the Ligurian coast. He was ordained a priest on April 2, 1892, in San Remo by Tommaso Reggio, bishop of Ventimiglia. His father did not come to the ceremony, but a month later he accepted his son’s choice. On the holy card of his first Mass Father August placed the words of the psalm: “One day within your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.” He spent his only year of priesthood in the Salesian house in Alassio, and there he died on April 8, 1893, the Saturday of the Easter octave, not yet thirty-five years old.

He was buried in Sieniawa, beside the family tombs, and later his remains were moved to the Salesian church in Przemyśl, where they rest to this day. The decree on his heroic virtues was promulgated on December 1, 1978, and on April 25, 2004, John Paul II beatified him in Rome. On that occasion he held him up to young people as a model of discerning a vocation in prayer and in obedience to spiritual guides. The Salesians keep his memorial on August 2, his birthday.