Saint Zygmunt Gorazdowski

Saint Zygmunt Gorazdowski was a Polish Catholic priest born in Sanok in 1845. During the Galician Slaughter, his grandmother saved him from death when peasants were attacking the manor houses of the nobility. In 1863 he took part in the January Uprising. After completing his theological studies in Lviv, as a young priest he tended cholera patients with his own hands, without neglecting his sacramental ministry. Called “the priest of beggars,” he was a great apostle of mercy and of care for the needs of others.

His life was filled with prayer and a hidden, ascetic way of living. He worked and suffered tirelessly, always full of zeal and courage for apostolic work. He was remembered as “persevering in labors, unwavering in difficulties, serene in adversity, patient in illness, and trusting in the power of prayer.” He is regarded as a model of mercy and goodness.

Committed to the religious education of families, he wrote the “Catechism of the Holy Catholic Church for the People.” Seeing widespread poverty and unemployment, he founded the House of Voluntary Work for beggars, where the poor could voluntarily do light work, receiving meals in return and wages paid into savings passbooks. The house was run by tertiary sisters, known today as the Sisters of Saint Joseph. In January 1883 he founded the People’s Cheap Kitchen to provide meals for the poor. Brother Albert Chmielowski, later a saint, took his meals there.

Among the works Saint Zygmunt brought into being were the Saint Josaphat Boarding House in Lviv, a place where future teachers were educated; the Infant Jesus Home for infants and single mothers, the first charitable work of its kind in the country; and the Boni Pastoris association, a community of priests. He also published Gazeta Codzienna, a Catholic daily newspaper meant to inform and form its readers in a Christian spirit.

He died in Lviv on January 1, 1920. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on June 26, 2001. He was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.