CIEPLAK, JAN FELIKS. - Polish bishop, born at Dombrowa (diocese of Kielce) on 17 Aug. 1857, died at Passaic, near New York, on 17 Feb. 1926. Professor at the Ecclesiastical Academy of St Petersburg from 1882, he was elected auxiliary bishop in 1908 (Titular Archbishop of Achrida [28 March 1919]), then apostolic administrator of Mohilev, during the exile of Msgr Raffo. Imprisoned in 1923 by the Soviet authorities for “having protested against the confiscation of ecclesiastical property and for having fomented the counter-revolution by superstitious acts,” he was sentenced to death. Pardoned, however, through the intervention of foreign powers, he was later exchanged for several non-Russian communists. He died suddenly in the United States after having been promoted to the recently restored archiepiscopal see of Wilno.
C. I. F.: V. CENTRO ITALIANO FEMMINILE.