SARKANDER, Johann, Blessed. - Martyr of the seal of Confession, b. at Skotschau (on the border of Austrian Silesia) on 20 Dec. 1576, d. in prison at Olmütz on 17 March 1620.
Ordained a priest, he exercised his ministry in various places of the diocese of Olmütz, until in 1616 he was elected parish priest at Holleschau in Moravia. There Baron Ladislaus Poppel of Lobkowitz had given back to the Catholics the churches taken from them by the Hussites, and to the Jesuits the meeting house of the Bohemian Brethren. S., aided by the Fathers, revived and rekindled the fervor of his flock, bringing about many conversions. The Thirty Years' War forced him in 1619 to take refuge in Poland to escape the persecutions of the Protestants; having returned after a few months to his parish, he succeeded in persuading the Polish troops, who had come to the aid of the Emperor, to spare the country; but this brought upon him the accusation that he himself had summoned those foreign troops; therefore, arrested, taken to Olmütz and tried by a commission of Hussites, he was ordered to reveal who had summoned the Poles, what he had done secretly in Poland, what had been confided to him in confession by Lobkowitz, his penitent. S. denied having had anything to do with the coming of the foreign troops; but he refused to betray the secret of Confession. Nor did the most horrible tortures inflicted on him succeed in moving him, which after a month of languishing brought him to the grave. The people immediately venerated him as a saint and sought his beatification. The process opened under Benedict XIV and interrupted, was resumed