RESURRECTIONISTS. - A religious congregation begun in 1836 in Paris by Bogdan Janski, Peter Semenenko and Jerome Kajsiewicz, who were at that time carrying on religious and social activity among Polish emigrants.
At first, under the influence of their environment, all three had nearly lost the faith: Janski was even among the directing members of the philosophical-social school of the Saint-Simonians. Remaining dissatisfied in his search for "truth," he abandoned the sect and, at the urging of the poet Adam Mickiewicz, founded with the other two the new religious society with the purpose of sustaining the faltering faith of the emigrants and of reforming the entire nation through them. Janski, a tireless lay apostle, died prematurely in Rome in 1840; Semenenko and Kajsiewicz, on the other hand, completed their theological studies in Rome and, ordained priests, developed Janski's work by taking their first religious vows in the catacombs of St. Sebastian on Easter day 1842, whence the name of Resurrectionists.
Fr. Semenenko, theologian, philosopher, orator and writer, fixed the spirit and the purpose of the Congregation as the Christianizing of the rising radical socialism through a living organization of parish life and through the education of youth, instilling the necessity of recognizing the Christian postulates of social justice. The Congregation carried on this work especially among the emigrants in the United States and in Canada, organizing a flourishing Catholic life. The founding of the Pontifical Polish College in Rome was the work of the Congregation.
Pius IX in 1860 granted the decree of praise and entrusted to the Resurrectionists the missions in Bulgaria: the Congregation therefore also welcomes members of the Eastern rite. On 10 March 1888 the Congregation was approved, and in 1902 the constitutions. Today the Resurrectionists work in various countries of Europe and America and number 49 houses with 586 religious.
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Ladislao Kosinski