Item 2065 - Fr Leo Rogalski SJ

Born: 11 April 1830, Galicja, Poland (Halych, Ukraine)
Entered: 09 November 1861, Stara Wieś, Poland - Galicanae Province (GALI)
Ordained: 24 August 1855, Lviv, Ukraine - pre Entry
Final Vows: 25 March 1873
Died: 03 June 1906, St Aloysius, Sevenhill, Adelaide, Australia - Galicanae Province (GALI)

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He arrived in Australia 04 April 1870 and was stationed at Sevenhill as part of the ASR Mission. He devoted himself particularly to the spiritual needs of the Poles there.
He was considered to be a very holy and zealous man.
He was sick for some time and had a number of strokes, the last of which took place six days before he died 03 June 1906 at Sevenhill

◆ Australian Jesuits : http://jesuit.org.au/anniversary-celebration-for-polish-jesuit-chaplain/

Anniversary celebration for Polish Jesuit chaplain

The Polish community in Melbourne gathered in celebration and thanksgiving on Sunday 8 March to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the country’s first Polish chaplain, Fr Leon Rogalski SJ.

Australian Provincial Fr Brian McCoy presided over Mass at St Ignatius’ Church in Richmond. In his homily, Fr McCoy spoke of the enormous undertaking that Fr Rogalski embarked on in accepting his mission to Australia.

‘In this modern time of air travel, it can be hard to imagine the generosity of Rogalski’, said Fr McCoy. ‘He was being asked, like Abraham, to leave his country, his kindred and his father’s house. To go somewhere new and foreign at the far end of the world. A journey so far away that it was most unlikely that he would ever return home.’

Fr Brian said that the anniversary was an opportunity not only to remember and give thanks for Fr Rogalski’s mission, but also to remember and give thanks to the Polish community’s contributions to Australia, and to the Jesuit chaplains who have followed Rogalski in ministering to that community over many years.

‘May we be encouraged by the example of Leon Rogalski, that the faith, generosity and love that he brought to this land 150 years ago may continue to bear fruit.’

Fr McCoy was joined at the Mass by Andrzej Pawel Bies SJ representing the Polish Jesuits, Fr Tony (Wieslaw) Slowik SJ and other members of the Polish Jesuit community in Australia, as well as other Australian Jesuits.

Mass was followed by refreshments in the parish hall. A new biography by Fr Pawel Bies SJ, depicting the life and work of Fr Rogalski SJ, was available for sale, as well as a commemorative Fr Leon Rogalski Sevenhill Cellars Shiraz.

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Leo Rogalski entered the Society as a secular priest, 24 August 1855, and was unique among the members of the Austrian Mission in Australia in being sent as a Polish-speaking priest to minister to the Poles, especially to those who had congregated at Hill River. He arrived at Sevenhill on 5 April 1870.
The Polish community was delighted with his arrival, and he immediately gave his people a mission. He also visited them in rural areas. He did this for the next 30 years, mainly stationed at Sevenhill. In 1894 he had a stroke, which left him partially paralysed, and so was unable to give much further service to his community In his latter years he was a vigorous promoter of the Australian “Messenger” among the younger generation of Poles.

Note from Franz Waldmann Entry
He left Vienna for Australia with Leo Rogalski, 3 December 1869

◆ Journal of Jesuit Studies 8, 2021

Book Reviews

Robert Danieluk
Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, Italy
[email protected]

Andrzej Paweł Bieś
Leon Rogalski, S. J.: Portrait of a Polish Migrant Chaplain as Depicted in His Letters from Australia. Kraków: Ignatianum University Press, 2020 (Polish version: Leon Rogalski SJ duszpasterz polskich emigrantów w listach z Australii. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Ignatianum w Krakowie, 2020). Pp. 132. Pb, 9.00 zł.

Leon Rogalski (1830–1906) was a Polish Jesuit priest sent to Australia at the end of 1869 to take pastoral care of his compatriots living there. Arriving at Sevenhill in Spring 1870, he started working among the Poles while also ministering to German and English-speaking Catholics in the area. Because the Poles were quite numerous, in 1871, he organized a small center for them consisting of a chapel, library, and schoolroom. The center was situated a few miles from Sevenhill at a site now known as Polish Hill River. Rogalski remained connected with this place practically for the rest of his life, exercising there his priestly ministry and teaching children not only catechism, but also reading and writing Polish. He of course worked elsewhere, e.g. Sevenhill or itinerant ministries. The present book is dedicated to him and his activity in Australia.

The first Poles arrived in Australia at the beginning of the nineteenth century; a greater immigration started a few decades later. At the same time, Rogalski - who entered the Jesuits in 1861 as a diocesan priest (ordained in 1855 in the Archdiocese of Lviv, today in western Ukraine) - was sent to join a new mission initiated by Austrian Jesuits in 1848. Rogalski was a member of the Province of Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. For that reason and also because of his linguistic skills, his superiors selected him for the mission.

As the title indicates, this publication is based on Rogalski’s letters. Indeed, the editor of the present book frequently interrupts his narrative with long quotes from the Jesuit’s correspondence. This technique, in a sense, allows the protagonist to speak directly to the reader as the author provides only necessary complementary information. Thus, this publication is a hybrid of a monograph and a critical edition from which a reader learn much about a little-known episode in Jesuit, Australian, and Polish history.

Twenty letters are quoted and listed at the end of the volume. Some had already been published in several periodicals; the others are preserved in the Archives of the Southern Polish Province of the Society of Jesus in Cracow. Their recipients were Rogalski’s brother Jan, a diocesan priest; his religious superiors, the provincial Michał Mycielski and his socius Wilhelm Merkel; and the Jesuit editors, Józef Hołubowicz, Władysław Czencz, Marcin Czermiński, of the periodical Misje katolickie in which many letters were published. After more than a hundred years and because of the journal’s relative inaccessibility, a reprinting was justified. Bieś had earlier commemorated the hundredth anniversary of Rogalski’s death, in a series of articles in Tygodnik polski, a Polish periodical in Melbourne. Now comes the present book in its two linguistic versions: English and Polish one.

The author focuses on the Australian chapter of Rogalski’s life. Born into a poor noble family from the area of Ternopil’ (today in Ukraine), he studied at the Jesuit college in his hometown. In 1851, he followed his older brother into the diocesan seminary in Lviv. After ordination, he worked in parishes in Skala-Podil's'ka and in Lviv itself; in 1859, he became military chaplain during the Austro-French war and served in northern Italy. Rogalski entered the Jesuit novitiate in Stara Wieś (south-eastern Poland). He later studied for three years in Ternopil’ and Innsbruck. He ministered in Ternopil’, Stara Wieś, and Łańcut (south-eastern Poland) between 1866 and his 1869 departure for Australia.

Bieś summarizes early Polish emigration to Australia and Jesuit presence there. The author follows Rogalski chronologically. The long journey of the missionary from Liverpool to Melbourne lasted three months. A letter after his arrival describes his first steps, first challenges, and first achievements. Rogalski willingly recalls important events in the life of the Polish community, e.g. visits of the ecclesiastical dignitaries such as the bishop of Adelaide Christopher Augustine Reynolds in 1883, and the primate of Australia, Patrick Francis, Cardinal Moran in 1888.

As often in the case with the missionaries, his letters usually sought financial assistance. He delineated the mission’s needs: liturgical vestments, altar supplies, missals, prayer-books, catechisms, but also manuals to teach children Polish. Some letters detail his many activities: in 1888, he heard more than seventy-three thousand confessions, distributed the same number of Holy Communion, delivered almost ten thousand sermons and conferences, baptized 460 people, buried ninety-six people, blessed fifty weddings, travelling all together thirty-six thousand miles (p. 90 of the Polish edition).

Some letters included observations about the flora and fauna in addition to reports on the native inhabitants, geography, and the weather of the country, all of which were so different from his native Poland (pp. 97–104 of the Polish edition). The numerous photos reproduced in the book, photos both old and contemporary, help the reader visualize the people and places discussed in the text.

The mission survived Rogalski’s death and endured into the first half of the twentieth century despite a shrinking Polish population as the Poles moved elsewhere: the school lasted until the 1920s, and the chapel until 1950. Polish Hill River became a church-museum in 1980 with various souvenirs from the past and hosting occasional religious or cultural events. Fr. Rogalski would be happy to know that he had successors: several Polish Jesuits worked in Australia during the last century serving the Polish Catholic community: currently four of them are based in Melbourne.