Andrew Bobola

The Holy Martyr Andrew Bobola, (Polish: Andrzej Bobola, * 1591 in Strachocina, † May 16 1657 in Janow Poleski, today Belarus ) was a Polish Jesuit from an old noble family in eastern Poland, who worked primarily in present-day Belarus and Ukraine.

His father was a tenant of a state farm in Western Galicia. In the years 1606-1611 Andreas studied at the Jesuit seminary of the Lyceum Hosianum in Brown Mountain, after which he joined the Jesuits in Vilnius. On July 13, 1613 he took the vows and in 1623 he was ordained priest. After that, he was a pastor in Nieswiez and later to 1630 preacher and confessor to the church to St. Casimir in Vilnius, Lithuania.

In the next few years Bobola worked as Superior of the Jesuit monastery in Bobruisk and later. Till 1642 as a preacher in Warsaw, Płock and Łomża 1652 he went to Pinsk, where he, from 1642 to 1646, had worked earlier. Known as a fiery preacher, he tried to convert the local Orthodox to Catholicism. Bobola in 1657, murdered during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of Cossacks in Janow Poleski. In 1853 took place under Pius IX. his beatification and 17 April 1938, Pope Pius XI. his canonization instead.

1938, on the occasion of the canonization, she was transferred to Warsaw. Since 1988 Andrew Bobola rests in a specially built for him sanctuary in the Polish capital.

The 300th anniversary of the death of St. Andrew Bobola was on 16 May 1957 by Pope Pius XII. the encyclical Invicti athletae Christi ( Latin: " The undefeated competitor for Christ " ) published.

Since 2002, he is one of the so-called " inferior " patron saint of Poland and the patron saint of the Archdiocese of Warsaw and the Diocese of Warmia and Mazury. Several after 1945 adopted by the Lutherans, today Catholic churches in Silesia and the former province of Posen bear his name today.

The parish church in the village of King, a district of Frechen, was named after the saint.