St. Stanislaus Kostka Church - Staten Island⸻

Our Patron

St. Stanislaus Kostka was born in Rostkow, Poland, in 1550, and was baptized in the parish church at Przasnysz.

When he was thirteen, he and his older brother Paul left the family home and together went to Vienna to begin their studies in the imperial high school conducted by the Jesuits there. At first they lived in the Jesuit boarding school and, when this was discontinued, in the home of a Protestant Viennese burgher.

During this period, the Jesuit college in Vienna had achieved great prominence. The professors, distinguished for both their learning and apostolic spirit, became Stanislaus ideal. He decided to follow these men by becoming a Jesuit priest.

When his parents refused to allow him to enter religious life, and the local Jesuits were reluctant to receive him without parental consent, Stanislaus secretly ran away from Vienna on August 10, 1567, to find some other way. He escaped from school and walked about a thousand miles from Vienna to Rome over mountain and through dale. He ran away from home not as a teenager out seeking thrills and questionable adventures, but rather as a true pilgrim on his way to reach his goal of vocation... a determined traveler en route to God... one on a journey without fear of danger or peril... without weakness or hesitation... rather as a real man who knows where he is going and what he wants from his Creator. In Rome he was accepted. He began his novitiate on October 28 and ten months later, on August 15, 1568, he died, probably of malaria.