PAULOWICH-LUCICH, STEFANO. — Bishop, born at Macarsca (Spalato) on 7 August 1790, died at Cattaro on 28 February 1853. Sent to complete his studies at the Seminary of Padua, he was ordained a priest there in 1814. From 1815 to 1823 he lived at Spalato, engaged in pastoral ministry and teaching, and was then admitted to the Institute of Sublime Ecclesiastical Education in Vienna, founded by the abbot Frint, court parish priest, to perfect the best priests of the Habsburg Empire in sacred theology.
The following year he was charged with providing religious assistance to the Italian political prisoners at Spielberg, and remained in this mission for four years, through ten successive stays in Brno. Political and nationalist concerns perhaps prevailed over P. in this office; and although the gratuitous accusation that he had violated the secrecy of confession does not stand, P.’s scant tact with the detainees, his investigations that were more police-like than priestly, his interference with the political and prison authorities, and his advice that severity be shown to the Emperor, even when the sovereign was willing to grant clemency, are certainly to be deplored. This emerges not only from the accusations levelled against him by various prisoners in their memoirs (Pellico, Maroncelli, Pallavicino, Confalonieri, and especially Andryane), but also from the official documents of the Moravian Archives.
Court chaplain in 1825, he was appointed bishop of Cattaro by Francesco I in 1827, according to the law then in force, and confirmed by Leo XII on 28 January 1828. P. took possession of his diocese the following autumn, but in 1833, following a rigorous inquiry conducted by the nuncio in Vienna, Gregory XVI ordered his removal, because P. showed himself too subservient to the civil authorities, to the grave detriment of the rights of the Church. With difficulty Francesco I obtained that so severe a measure against P. be spared and that the Holy See be content to accept his resignation.