SAINT STANISLAUS KOTSKA: JESUIT novice who died at seventeen, is a patron of POLAND, 1568

1568                                                                                                                [S. J.]

St. Stanislaus Kotska, who died at seventeen after nine months as a Jesuit novice and is now a patron of Poland.

Second son of a Polish senator, he asked for admission to the Society of Jesus after several years at their school in Vienna.

The provincial, however, was afraid of parental opposition; and so Stanislaus stole off to Germany, where St. Peter Canisius tried him at menial tasks for three weeks and then sent him on to the general in Rome.

This was St. Francis Borgia.

He accepted the novice despite the father’s threat that he would have the Society expelled from Poland.

Paul, an older brother, was sent to Rome to bring Stanislaus home at any cost — but found him dead.

Two weeks before the Assumption the saint said he hoped to be in heaven for the feast.

He fell ill on the tenth and died on the August the fifteenth, shortly after telling the priest he had seen the Blessed Mother.

LIVES OF THE SAINTS

Father Augustine Kalberer, O. S. B.

November 13: Saint Stanislaw Kotska, patron of Poland

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