Saint Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński

Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński (1 November 1822 in Voiutyn, now Ukraine – 17 September 1895 in Kraków) was a professor of the Saint Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy, Archbishop of Warsaw in 1862-1883 (exiled by Tsar Alexander II to Yaroslavl for 20 years), and founder of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary. He was canonised on 11 October 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI. His parents were Gerard Feliński and Eva Wenderoff. He was born in Voiutyn (pol. Wojutyn) in Volhynia (present-day Ukraine) when it was part of the Russian empire. He was the third of six children, of whom two died at an early age. His father died when he was eleven years old. Five years later in 1838 his mother was exiled to Siberia for a nationalist conspiracy (in which she tried to work to improve the social and economic conditions of the farmers), as a result he only got to see her again as a university student. After completing high school, he studied mathematics at the Imperial Moscow University from 1840 to 1844. In 1847 he went to Paris where he studied French literature at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France. In Paris he spent time living with Polish exiles, and knew Adam Mickiewicz and was a friend of Juliusz Słowacki. In 1848 he participated in the Polish uprising against Prussian rule in Poznań (then capital city of the semi-autonomous Grand Duchy of Posen). From 1848 to 1850 he tutored the sons of Eliza and Zenon Brzozowski in Munich and Paris. In 1851 he returned to Poland and entered the diocesan seminary of Zhytomyr. He studied at the Saint Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy. He was ordained on 8 September 1855 by the Archbishop of Mohilev, Ignacy Holowiński. He was assigned to the Dominican Fathers' parish of St Catherine of Siena in St Petersburg until 1857, when he was appointed as spiritual director of the Ecclesiastical Academy and a professor of philosophy. In 1856 he founded the charitable organization "Recovery for the poor".