BOBOLA, ANDREW, ST.

Polish Jesuit missionary and martyr; b. Palatinate Province of Sandomir, Poland, 1591; d. Janow, May 10, 1657. From an old and distinguished family, he was educated in the Jesuit Academy at Vilna (1606–11). He entered the Society of Jesus in 1611 and studied classics and philosophy at Vilna, taught for two years at Grunsberg, studied theology at Vilna, and was ordained there in 1622. As pastor at Nieswiez he worked heroically among the plague-stricken in 1624. Except for a period of temporary retirement because of ill health (1643–49), he spent his life in missionary and pastoral work at Vilna and in the countryside, bringing whole villages of Orthodox believers back to communion with Rome. In the political, social, and religious wars between Poland and Russia involving the Eastern and Western Churches, Bobola was a marked man because of his religious activities. In the devastation of East Poland, he was cruelly martyred by Ukrainian Cossacks at Janow. Devotion to Bobola spread rapidly in Poland and Lithuania when his inexplicably incorrupt body was discovered 40 years after burial in the crypt under the ruins of the Jesuit church in Pinsk. The cause of beatification was at first delayed by the suppression of the Society of Jesus and then by the death of Pius VIII, who had summoned a congregation for the advance of the cause in 1830. He was beatified in 1853. Marshal Józef Pilsudski sent a postulatory letter for canonization to Benedict XV in 1920. Canonization finally occurred in 1938. Over a period of 280 years the body of Andrew Bobola endured many translations. Having been buried in Pinsk in 1657, the body was removed to Polotsk in White Russia in 1808 and in 1922 taken to Vitebsk and to Moscow, where it was concealed by the Bolshevik government until 1923. Upon the third request of Pius XI, it was released and taken to Rome in October of 1923. Shortly after canonization in 1938, it was conveyed through Slavic countries via Budapest and Cracow to Warsaw. During the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the body was removed from the cathedral to the Church of St. Andrew Bobola at Mokotow in Warsaw, where it may still be seen. The first church in America named for St. Andrew was consecrated in Dudley, Mass., Diocese of Worcester, on Feb. 21, 954.

Feast: May 16 (Jesuits).

Bibliography: c. mareschini, The Life of Saint Andrew Bobola of the Society of Jesus, Martyr, tr. and ed. l. j. gallagher and p. v. donovan (Boston 1939); Santo Andrea Bobòla, martire, della Comp. di Gesù (Isola de Liri 1938). l. rocci, Vito del B. Andrea Bobòla, martire polacco (2d ed. Rome 1938). c. sommervogel et al., Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus (Brussels-Paris 1890–1932) 11:1402–04. j. dobraczynski, Mocarz: opowiesc o šw. Andrzeju Boboli (2d ed. Warsaw 1993). p. bernard, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912) 2:1641–44. j. n. tylenda, Jesuit Saints and Martyrs (Chicago 1998) 136–138.

[l. j. gallagher]