Lumen 2018

Crisis Towards the end of 1674, after he had received permission to build the retreat house, Fr. Stanislaus began efforts to obtain appro- bation from the Holy See for the Marian Congregation that he had founded. At that time, he sent a petition to Pope Clement X (1670- 1676), who, in turn, sent it to the Sacred Congregation for Bishops and Religious to ask its opinion in the matter. According to the es- tablished procedure, the Sacred Congregation sent a copy of the pe- tition to the Apostolic Nuncio in Poland, Francis Buonvisi (1673-1675). He sent it to Bishop Wierzbowski with his own letter in which he probably requested more information regarding Fr. Pa- pczynski and his intentions. 104 We do not have any information about the further course of this matter. Bishop Wierzbowski probably did not send any information to the Nuncio, and the matter got stuck at the chancery of the Or- dinary of Poznan. Perhaps the bishop learned about the crisis that Fr. Stanislaus had experienced in 1676 and assumed that everything was over? For in 1675, Krajewski had run away from the Korabiew hermitage, and Fr. Papczynski had been left alone there, or maybe only with Br. John of St. Mary, 105 who also must have left in the spring of 1676 because his name is not mentioned in any of the later documents. The aforementioned crisis must have been rather serious because, in the summer of 1676, Fr. Stanislaus applied again to be accepted back by the Piarist Fathers. It was his way of testing whether it was, indeed, God’s will for him to found the Congregation of Marians or whether, as the crisis might suggest, he should abandon this idea and return to his original religious vocation. Father Stanislaus’s re- quest was supported by the Provincial Chapter of the Piarist Fathers gathered in Podoliniec at the beginning of August 1676, but rejected by their General Chapter of May 18, 1677, which cited the decisions of the previous chapters, forbidding the acceptance of those who had already left the Piarist Order. 106 However, before the answer came S TANISLAUS P APCZYNSKI 278