Jonas Steponavičius

Jonas Steponavičius (10 March 1880 – 8 December 1947) was a Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest active in Lithuanian cultural and political life. He was ordained a priest in 1906 and earned Ph.D. in psychology in 1912. He returned to Lithuania and became a priest in the Church of St. Johns, Vilnius. He joined Lithuanian cultural life, becoming the first chairman of the Lithuanian Education Society Rytas which established and maintained Lithuanian-language one-room schools. His attempt at holding Lithuanian-language service at the Church of St. Johns caused Polish protests and he was reassigned to the Dominican Church of the Holy Spirit and later to Semeliškės. During World War I, he served as a military chaplain in the Caucasus Campaign. After returning to Lithuania, he joined the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party and was elected four times to the Seimas (parliament) from 1920 to the December 1926 coup d'état that brought the regime of Antanas Smetona. He retired from politics and became a school director in Zarasai and a teacher in Utena. In mid-1944, Steponavičius was one of the organizers of the Fatherland Defense Force, a short-lived military unit formed to combat approaching Soviet forces. He retreated to Germany where he died in 1947.

Steponavičius was born in Zokoriai (), near Antalieptė, Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire, to a family of petty landed nobles. He received his first education at home and in 1890 was admitted to the Russian-language Gymnasium of Alexander III in Riga (). In 1896, he transferred to the Riga State Gymnasium but left it without completing the sixth grade in 1899. He continued his education at the Vilnius Priest Seminary and the Saint Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy. He was ordained a priest in 1906 and in 1907 defended his dissertation on Immanuel Kant to receive master's degree. He studied further in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, University of Berlin, and University of Leipzig. In Leipzig, he studied under professor Wilhelm Wundt and defended his Ph.D. thesis on subjective equality in 1912.