Sandomiria (Sandomierz), Diocese of
City and diocese in Poland. Pius VII, with the bull *Ex imposita nobis* of 30 June 1818, established the diocese of S. by detaching a large part of the territory from the diocese of Kielce, which was suppressed in the same year, and made it a suffragan of Warsaw. The first bishop was Msgr. Stefan Holowczyc (1741–1823), later Archbishop of Warsaw.
It has an area of 12,150 sq. km with a population of 1,025,780, of whom 952,607 are Catholics distributed in 241 parishes, served by 445 diocesan priests and 25 regular clergy; it has two seminaries, 7 male and 92 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 352).
Shrines. – At Święty-Krzyż (Holy Cross, Mount Calvo) the church and monastery of the Benedictines who came from Monte Cassino in 1606; in the church are the relics of the Holy Cross; church and monastery of the 12th century. S. is one of the oldest cities in Poland; it was one of the “principal royal seats.” Notable churches are the Cathedral, consecrated in 1191; destroyed by the Tartars it was rebuilt in 1360, and preserves frescoes from that period; the church of the Holy Spirit (1222); the church of St Paul (1226), rebuilt in the 15th and 18th centuries; the church of St Michael (1623) with the monastery of the Benedictine nuns; the monastery of the Dominicans brought in 1226. The seminary was founded in 1635. In the city is the 14th-century castle. Among the blessed are recalled: Ladystaw (Gielniowa (1440–1505), Bernardino, beatified in 1750; Dominicans who perished in 1260 during the Tartar invasion; in 1295 Boniface VIII established for 2 June the feast of the martyrs of S. in the church of Santa Maria ad Martyres in Rome. Eminent bishops were Adam Prosper Burzynski, who died in 1830; Antoni Franciszek Sawsery Sotkiewicz (1826–1901).