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Sapieha Adam Stefan

Prince, archbishop of Krakow, cardinal. He came from an old magnate family of the Lis coat of arms, from the Galician Sapieha line, representing the patriotic and social line. Father Adam helped the January insurgents, a political and economic activist imprisoned by the Austrians. Mother Jadwiga, a known patriot and doing good. Adam Stefan studied law and political science at the University of Vienna and the Jagiellonian University, he also studied theology at the Jesuit University in Innsbruck. In 1892 he has ordained a priest. After graduation and many promotions, in 1906 he was appointed by Pope Pius X to the Vatican as a secret chamberlain of His Holiness. During his stay in Rome, he constantly fought for the consolidation of Polishness in Germanized lands. On December 17, 1911, he became the bishop of Krakow, later metropolitan, cardinal, and then the Vatican’s representative for the Church in the provinces of southern Poland. It was he who ordered Pisudski’s body to be moved to the crypt under the Silver Bell Tower. There was an objection from the Sanacja authorities, known in history as the Wawel conflict.


Adam Stefan cared for charity, fought persecution, created shelters for sick children, treatment facilities for tuberculosis, and devoted his property to the needy, sick and homeless. During the occupation, he was associated with the underground and underground struggle. He was in constant contact with the Central Welfare Council (RGO), in which his spirit was active and in which he himself intervened with the German authorities. There is a monument to him in Krakowska Nowa Huta.

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