Blessed Władysław Bukowiński

Władysław Bukowiński (also known as Ladislao Bukowinski; 22 December 1904 – 3 December 1974), was a Polish Roman Catholic priest who served in the diocese of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. He served in Poland during World War II and became renowned among his parishioners for his calmness and his intelligence. He made an effort to meet the conflict with the love of Jesus Christ and the message of the Gospel. He was arrested on several occasions and was a prisoner for a time in a Soviet gulag. After he was released, he served a long-term mission in Kazakhstan. Pope Francis proclaimed him to be venerable in 2015 upon the confirmation of his life of heroic virtue, and approved a miracle attributed to him twelve months later. His beatification, in which Cardinal Angelo Amato presided on behalf of the pontiff, was celebrated on 11 September 2016 in Karaganda where he had served. Władysław Bukowiński was born on 22 December 1904 in nowadays Ukraine (then in Russian Empire) but was an ethnic Pole. He was the eldest son of Jozef Cyprian Bukowiński (16 March 1874 – 15 September 1952) and Jadwiga Monika Scipio del Campo (1885–1918) and was the brother of Gustav and Irene Bukowiński-Davidovskaya (d. 1930). He was baptized on 26 December in the church of Saint Barbara with the names of "Władysław Antoni". He had a half-brother named Zygmunt (d. 1982). Following his mother's death, his father married her sister, Victoria Scipio del Campo. He spent his childhood in a Ukrainian region until 1912 when he relocated to Opatów. (He moved again in 1920 after the death of his mother and the remarriage of his father.) In 1914, he began his education in Kiev and then studied in Podolia until 1917 when he began to attend a coed Polish grammar school in Płoskirow. In 1920, the Bolshevik invasion caused him to move with his family to the village of Sandomierz. On 24 September 1921, he passed his examinations in Kraków and began preparations to study theology.