SANDOMIRIA (SANDOMIERZ), DIOCESE OF. - City and diocese in Poland. Pius VII, with the bull Ex imposita nobis of 30 June 1818, created the diocese of S. by detaching a large part of the territory of the diocese of Kielce, suppressed in the same year, and as a suffragan of Warsaw. The first bishop was Msgr. Stefan Holowczye (1741-1823), later archbishop of Warsaw.
It has an area of 12,150 sq km with a population of 1,025,780 inhabitants, of whom 952,607 are Catholics distributed in 241 parishes, served by 445 diocesan priests and 25 regulars; it has two seminaries, 7 male religious communities and 92 female ones (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 352).
Sanctuaries. - At Swiety-Krzyz (Monte Calvo) there is a church and cloister of the Benedictines who came from Montecassino in 1006; in the church are the relics of the Holy Cross; a church and cloister of the 12th century. S. is one of the oldest cities of Poland, it was one of the "sedes regni principales". Notable churches are the Cathedral, consecrated in 1191; destroyed by the Tartars, it was rebuilt in 1360, and frescoes of the period are preserved there; the church of the Holy Spirit of 1222; the church of St. Paul of 1226, rebuilt in the 15th and 18th centuries; the church of St. Michael of 1623 with the cloister of the Benedictines; the cloister of the Dominicans, brought there in 1226. The Seminary was founded in 1635. In the city there is the castle of the 14th century. Among the blessed are remembered: Ladvlaw z Gielniowa (1440-1505), Bernardino, beatified in 1750; 49 Dominicans who perished in 1260 during the invasion of the Tartars; in 1295 Boniface VIII established for 2 June the commemoration of the martyrs of S. in the church of St. Mary ad Martyres in Rome. Eminent bishops were Adam Prosper Burzynski, who died in 1830; Antoni Franciszek Ksawery Sotkiewicz (1826-1901).
Bibliography7 works
Adam Macielinski