SANDOMIRIA (SANDOMIERZ), DIOCESE of. – City and diocese in Poland. Pius VII, by 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 diocese of Warsaw. The first bishop was Mgr Stefan Holowczye (1741–1823), later archbishop of Warsaw.
It has an area of 12,150 sq. km. and a population of 1,025,780 inhabitants, of whom 952,607 are Catholics distributed among 241 parishes, served by 445 diocesan priests and 25 religious priests; it has two seminaries, 7 male and 92 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 352).
Sanctuaries. – At Swiety-Krzyz (Monte Calvo), the church and cloister of the Benedictines who came from Montecassino in 1006; the relics of the Holy Cross are in the church; the church and cloister date from the 12th century. S. is one of the oldest cities in Poland and was one of the « sedes regni principale ». Notable churches are the Cathedral, consecrated in 1191; destroyed by the Tartars, it was rebuilt in 1360, and frescoes from that period are preserved there; the church of the Holy Spirit, dating from 1222; the church of St Paul, dating from 1226 and rebuilt in the 15th and 18th centuries; the church of St Michael, dating from 1623, with the cloister of the Benedictine nuns; and the cloister of the Dominicans, brought there in 1226. The Seminary was founded in 1635. In the city there is a 14th-century castle. Among the blesseds are remembered: Ladvlaw z Gielniowa (1440–1505), Bernardino, beatified in 1750; and 49 Dominicans who perished in 1260 during the invasion of the Tartars. In 1295 Boniface VIII established 2 June as the feast 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, and Antoni Franciszek Ksawery Sotkiewicz (1826–1901).