381 indeks nazw geograficznych Summary REVEREND KRISTUPAS ŠVIRMICKAS – THE SPIRITUAL COUNSELOR OF SIBERIAN DEPORTEES Rev. Krzysztof Szwermicki (lith. Kristupas Švirmickas) (1814–1894) was born in an impoverished boyar family in Varnupiai in the eastern part of the former Commonwealth of Both Nations. He participated in the 1830–1831 uprising and was injured two times. The period of hiding in the estates of local boyars was a time for personal retreat and spiritual growth. After recuperating, he decided to continue to serve his homeland and landsmen, but as a priest of the Marian Fathers. Ordained a priest in 1837, he entered a whirlpool of difficult tasks. He helped Rev. J. Falkowski to lead the first School for the Deaf in the Kingdom of Poland in Warsaw, and founded a similar school in Marijampole in 1841. Seeing the increased Russification of the nation, he became engaged in conspiratorial national liberating activities. He was arrested in 1846 and deported to Siberia. His term of deportation ended in 1855, but heeding the plea of other deportees he decided to remain to serve them. During the 48 years spent in Siberia he worked in all possible areas to ease the hard plight of the deportees. Also appointed as the chaplain of the army in Siberia he visited all the places where any Catholics lived. Using his own funds, he created in Siberia a nursery for orphans and a parish school. ‘Strengthening hearts and souls’ he established a library. He assisted the disabled clergy and lay deportees both spiritually and financially. After a fire in Irkutsk in which the church and pastor’s house were burned down, in an unbelievably brief time he realized his plan to build a new church, one of the most beautiful churches in Siberia. He was murdered during a robbery by unknow criminals on October 31st, 1894. In the ecumenical funeral in which Catholics and Orthodox, Chinese and Buriats participated, he was sincerely mourned because ‘our pastor died’. A man, ‘who was an apostle of love in the inhuman land of deportation’, passed into eternity. Rev. Jan Kosmowski, MIC
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