St. Stanislaus of Kraków

Who they were

Stanislaus of Szczepanów was Bishop of Kraków under King Bolesław II, a capable and brutal ruler whose cruelties the bishop confronted first privately, then publicly, and finally with the Church's last resort, which was excommunication.

The king's answer came in 1079 at the church of St. Michael at Skałka, where Stanislaus was celebrating Mass. The tradition Poland has kept for nearly a thousand years says that when his men balked, Bolesław struck the bishop down himself. The kingdom's revulsion drove the king into exile and eventual penance, and Stanislaus became for Poland what Becket became for England a century later: the proof, renewed under every occupation and regime since, that a nation's conscience outranks its rulers. He was canonized in 1253, the first Polish saint, his relics rest in Wawel Cathedral, and 11 April remains a national solemnity. He is a different man from St. Stanislaus Kostka, the teenage Jesuit novice, with whom he is constantly confused.

Why people turn to St. Stanislaus of Kraków

Polish families and parishes, with St. John Paul II, who held his see and invoked him constantly. And everyone whose office requires telling power no, with St. Ambrose, St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher and St. Oscar Romero, which is five men across fifteen centuries doing the same job.

How to ask their intercession

Before the confrontation your role demands, prayed with open eyes. Ambrose survived his; Stanislaus did not; both of them said the thing anyway.