Joseph Dabrowski

Józef Dąbrowski (January 27, 1842–February 15, 1903) was a Polish Catholic priest. Always the champion of authority, his counsel was ever gentle and calm. He was simple, quiet, and retiring, and entirely devoted to the promotion of God's glory and the welfare of his fellowmen.

Born at Zoltance, Russian Poland He studied at the Gymnasium of Lublin and at the University of Warsaw. During the Polish January Uprising of 1863 he participated in many engagements, and in 1864 fled to Dresden; thence to Lucerne and Berne where he continued his studies in mathematics. Going to Rome, because of his anti-Russian political activities,he came under the direction of the famous Resurrectionist, Father Peter Semenenko, and was ordained priest in Rome on 1 August 1869.

In 1870 he went to Wisconsin in America to do pastoral work among Polish Americans, and in a letter dated 22 Jan., from St. Francis Seminary in the Milwaukee suburb of St. Francis, Wisconsin, to Father Semenenko he betrays a remarkable grasp of the demoralized conditions among the Poles in the United States, of whom he had actually seen so little.

He founded the SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary Seminary of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Detroit (1887), becoming its first rector.

He urged the Resurrectionists to come to Chicago or Milwaukee and there establish schools of higher education whence they might send out missionaries to the scattered Poles.

In 1870 he was appointed pastor of Polonia, Wisconsin, where for five years he fought against the unfortunate conditions existing in one of the oldest Polish communities in the United States.

Unable to close the demoralizing inns about the church he obtained by gift from an Irishman 20 acres (81,000 m²) of land for the erection of new parish buildings and abandoned the old site.

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