Blessed Jan Beyzym

Blessed Jan Beyzym was a Polish Jesuit, for many years an educator of young people in Tarnopol and Chyrów, and later a missionary who devoted his life to lepers in Madagascar. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on October 2, the day of his death. In the formula of beatification John Paul II set his memorial on October 12, and it is celebrated on that day in Poland.

He was born on May 15, 1850, in Beyzymy Wielkie in Volhynia, in the Polish lands then subject to Russia, into a noble family that gave him a solid Christian upbringing. In 1863, after the failed uprising against Russia, his father emigrated, and Jan took on various jobs to support the family. He finished secondary school in Kyiv and, while still a student, sensed his vocation.

On December 10, 1872, he entered the Jesuit novitiate in Stara Wieś near Brzozów. After studying philosophy and theology, he was ordained a priest in Krakow on July 26, 1881, by Bishop Albin Dunajewski. For seventeen years he was a prefect and teacher in the Jesuit colleges in Tarnopol and Chyrów. He cared especially for boys in difficult circumstances.

In 1897 he wrote to the superior general of the order that he knew very well what leprosy was and what awaited him, but that it did not frighten him; on the contrary, it attracted him. In 1898, at the age of 48, he left for Madagascar. He was sent to the leprosarium at Ambahivoraka near Antananarivo, where 150 sick people lived in almost total abandonment, in crumbling huts and without medicine, dying more often of hunger than of disease. He was the first priest in the history of the mission in Madagascar to live among the lepers. With donations from his compatriots he bought rice and saw to hygiene; according to an eyewitness, the number of burials fell from five to seven a week to five a year.

He wanted to build a hospital where the sick would have humane living conditions. In 1903 he moved for this purpose to Marana near Fianarantsoa. He raised money tirelessly, writing letters to benefactors in Poland and other countries. The hospital for 150 patients was opened on August 16, 1911. It bears the name of Our Lady of Częstochowa and still operates today. He nourished his faith with steadfast devotion to the Eucharist and to the Mother of God.

Worn out by work and illness, he died in Fianarantsoa on October 2, 1912. He did not live to fulfill his hidden wish to go to Sakhalin and work among the convicts.

The diocesan process began in 1984 in Krakow and in Fianarantsoa. John Paul II beatified him on August 18, 2002, on the Błonia meadows in Krakow, together with Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński, Jan Balicki, and Sancja Szymkowiak. In his homily the Pope said that the blessed served day and night those who had been cast out of social life, and that his work of mercy was part of bringing the Gospel to those who do not know it.