Blessed Honorat Koźmiński

Blessed Honorat Koźmiński was a Capuchin, a priest, and a confessor who, in the Russian partition of Poland, at the time of the suppression of religious houses, founded many religious congregations that lived in hiding. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on December 16, the day of his death; in Poland his memorial is kept on October 13.

He was born on October 16, 1829, in Biała Podlaska; at baptism he received the names Florentyn Wacław Jan. He studied architecture in Warsaw, and in his youth he lost his faith. In April 1846 the tsarist police, wrongly suspecting him of taking part in a conspiracy, imprisoned him in the Warsaw Citadel. In prison he fell gravely ill, and on August 15, 1846, the Solemnity of the Assumption, he regained his faith. He attributed his conversion to the intercession of the Mother of God and to the prayers of his own mother. He was released on March 27, 1847.

In December 1848 he entered the Capuchins, and in the novitiate at Lubartów he took the name Honorat. He wanted to remain a lay brother, but his superiors directed him to the priesthood; he was ordained on December 27, 1852. In Warsaw he preached, heard confessions, and served as a prison chaplain. He was the confessor of Blessed Mary Angela Truszkowska, who in 1855 began the congregation of the Felician Sisters.

After the January Uprising of 1863 the Russian authorities suppressed the Capuchin friary in Warsaw and closed the novitiates. Father Honorat was moved to Zakroczym, where he lived under police surveillance until 1892, and then to Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą. People came to his confessional from many parts of the country. Many longed for religious life, the way to which was closed. He advised them to live the evangelical counsels without a habit, in their own surroundings, after the pattern of the hidden life of Jesus and Mary in Nazareth.

From 1855 to 1895 he founded twenty-six congregations, most of them without a habit; more than a dozen of them exist to this day. They served different milieus: teachers, workers, domestic servants, craftsmen, the sick. In 1889 the Holy See approved their way of life. John Paul II called Father Honorat the creator of a new form of religious life, similar to today’s secular institutes.

A painful trial for him was the affair of the Mariavites, in which he was entangled through slander. The Holy See instructed him to give up the direction of the congregations he had founded. He obeyed at once and called them to heroic obedience to the Church. From 1905 illness and deafness no longer allowed him to hear confessions, so he guided others by letter. He died on December 16, 1916, in Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą, at the age of 87, and he rests in the Capuchin church there.

John Paul II beatified him on October 16, 1988, in Saint Peter’s Square, on the tenth anniversary of his own election. He recalled then the blessed’s words that every day he goes out from Christ, goes to Christ, and returns to Christ. Blessed Honorat is the principal patron of the Diocese of Łowicz.