BARZYŃSKI, VINCENT

Missionary whose varied activities influenced Polish Catholic development in the United States; b. Sulislawice, Russian-held Poland, Sept. 20, 1838; d. Chicago, Ill., May 2, 1899. He was the son of Joseph and Mary (Sroczyńska) Barzyński and was baptized Michael. After studies at the diocesan seminary in Lublin, Poland, he was ordained there on Oct. 27, 1861. He participated in the unsuccessful Polish uprising in January of 1863 against Russia and then sought refuge in Austria and in France. At Paris he joined (1866) the recently founded Congregation of the Resurrection and was sent to the United States to work among Polish Catholics in the Diocese of Galveston, Texas. In 1874 he was appointed pastor of St. Stanislaus Kostka parish in Chicago, remaining there until his death. Besides administrating the largest Polish parish and grade school in America, he founded a publishing house that launched (1890) a Polish Catholic daily, Dziennik Chicagoski, still in existence. He established (1891) St. Stanislaus Kostka High School for boys, which he unsuccessfully planned to expand into a college. He was active in the Polish Roman Catholic Union; in the organization of several Chicago parishes and parochial schools; in the formation of a new Polish-American sisterhood, the Franciscan Sisters of Bl. Kunegunda; and in the building of an orphanage and home for the aged. After serving as a superior of the Chicago Resurrectionists, he became the first provincial of the congregation's American province (1898–99); he has been described as one of the most effective executors of the Resurrectionist concept of the modern parish as a barrier against the radical socialist influences of the times in which he lived.

Bibliography: w. kwiatkowski, Historia Zgromadzenia Zmartwychwstania Pańskiego na Stuletniaą Rocznicę Jego Założenia 1842–1942 (Albano 1942). l. m. long, The Resurrectionists (Chicago 1947). s. siatka, Krótkie Wspomnienie o Życiu i Działalności Ks. M. Wincentego Barzyńskiego CR (Chicago 1901).

[j. v. swastek]