Lumen 2018

the college in Vilnius and Vicar-Provincial Superior of the Piarist Fa- thers. Father Papczynski was highly esteemed by the Piarists in Vil- nius, it was therefore small wonder that one of them was working on preparing his biography. Father Rosolecki’s death in 1752 inter- rupted the work he had started. Father Casimir Wyszynski bemoaned this fact and wrote that the Marians suffered an irreparable loss when the rector of the college in Vilnius died. He was deeply convinced of Fr. Stanislaus’s holiness and that was the reason why he was writing his biography. He expected the Marians to prepare a concise biogra- phy of their Founder, while he himself was to focus on the period when Fr. Papczynski was associated with the Piarists and to describe his virtues, merits, and works undertaken in that congregation. 5 After Fr. Rosolecki’s death, Fr. Wyszynski himself (1700-1755) decided to continue the work. He was an educated man and held various offices in the Congregation of Marians — that of a Novice Master (1728-1730; 1734-1737), Superior General (1737-1741; 1747-1750) and Procurator General in Rome (1751-1753). To- wards the end of his life he traveled to Portugal (1753) where he died in the opinion of sanctity (1755). Soon after his death, a beat- ification process was opened which was concluded only in recent times with the publication of the Decree on the heroic nature of (his) virtues on December 21, 1989. The fruit of Fr. Wyszynski’s work was a biography titled Vita Venerabilis Servi Dei Patris Stanislai a Jesu Maria Papczynski written in 1754. It is a precious source for us because Fr. Casimir diligently gathered many details concerning Fr. Stanislaus. He looked for eyewitnesses to his life or at least for peo- ple who knew such witnesses. He even traveled to Podegrodzie in order to preserve whatever was still alive in human memory and the local tradition. Father Papczynski’s biography written by Fr. Wyszynski was trans- lated into Portuguese and published under the title Vida do Veneravel Servo de Deos, o Padre Estanislao de Jesus Maria [...] by Joao Teixeira Coelho of St. Paio, a diocesan priest, member of the Third Order of St. Francis, in Lisbon in 1757. Fr. Wyszynski met Teixeira in Lisbon Preface 19