Blessed Rafał Chyliński

Blessed Rafał Chyliński was a Polish Conventual Franciscan and priest, a valued confessor, preacher, and helper of the poor. The Church remembers him above all for his service to the sick during the plague in Krakow. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on December 2, the day of his death.

He was born in January 1694 in the village of Wysoczka in Greater Poland, into a noble family of modest means, and at baptism he received the name Melchior. The sources do not agree on the day: the apostolic letter of beatification gives January 8, and scholars of his life January 6, the Solemnity of the Epiphany. He attended the parish school in nearby Buk and then the Jesuit college in Poznań. In 1712, during the Great Northern War, he enlisted in the army, where he was a standard-bearer. It is not known for certain on whose side he served.

After three years he left the army and in 1715 entered the Conventual Franciscans in Krakow. On April 4 he received the habit and the religious name Rafał (Raphael). He made his vows on April 26, 1716, and in 1717 he was ordained a priest. His superiors sent him in turn to many friaries, among them Radziejów, Kalisz, Gniezno, Poznań, and Warka. Everywhere he preached, taught the truths of the faith, and spent long hours in the confessional.

In 1728 he came to live in the friary at Łagiewniki, today a part of Łódź. He lived in great poverty, fasted and did penance, and every day he prayed the office in honor of the Mother of God. To the poor who came to the friary he gave out food and clothing; when he had nothing else left, he gave them his own portion of bread or his own cloak. He kept telling his brothers and lay people how good God is and how much he ought to be served.

In 1736 he was transferred to Krakow, where the plague was spreading. At his own request he took up the care of the infected. Throughout the epidemic he visited them morning and evening, brought them help, heard their confessions, and prepared them for death, with no regard for his own safety. When the plague ceased in 1738, he returned to Łagiewniki and again devoted himself to the poor and the sick.

Worn out by work and illness, he spent the last weeks of his life confined to bed and bore his suffering patiently. He died at Łagiewniki on December 2, 1741, at the age of forty-seven. He was buried in the Franciscan church there, where his relics are venerated to this day. The people he had helped began at once to ask for his intercession with God.

Efforts toward his beatification began as early as 1761, but they were interrupted by the partitions of Poland. On May 13, 1949, Pope Pius XII confirmed the heroic virtue of Father Rafał. For the beatification, the sudden healing of a Warsaw nobleman in 1764 was recognized as a miracle. John Paul II declared him blessed on June 9, 1991, in Warsaw. He said then that the hidden life of this friar had been, in the sad times of the Saxon kings, a protest and an act of atonement for what was destroying Poland.