Joseph Kalinowski, later known as Saint Raphael, was born in Lithuania in 1835 to Andrew and Josepha Kalinowski. Despite feeling a calling to the priesthood early on, he decided to finish his education first. He pursued a variety of subjects, including zoology, chemistry, agriculture, and apiculture at the Institute of Agronomy in Hory Horki, Russia, and at the Academy of Military Engineering in Saint Petersburg.
Saint Raphael became a Lieutenant in the Russian Military Engineering Corps in 1857. During his tenure, he supervised the construction of the railway between Kursk and Odessa. In Brest-Litovsk, he began teaching and funding a Sunday school for anyone interested. Even though he supported the Polish insurrection in 1863, he only accepted the role of minister of war for the Vilna region with the assurance that he would never hand out a death sentence or execute a prisoner. He was arrested soon after the insurrection and was sentenced to death. However, his sentence was reduced to ten years of forced labour in the Siberian salt mines.
After his release in 1873, he was exiled from his native Lithuania and worked as a tutor in Paris for three years. Saint Raphael then joined the Carmelite Order in Graz, Austria, in 1877, where he took the name Raphael. He studied theology in Hungary and was ordained a priest in 1882 after joining the Carmelite house in Czama, Poland.
Saint Raphael worked to restore the Discalced Carmelites to Poland and foster church unity. He founded a convent at Wadowice, Poland, in 1889 and worked alongside Blessed Alphonsus Mary Marurek. He was also a renowned spiritual director for both Catholics and Orthodox. Saint Raphael was an ardent parish priest and spent many hours with his parishioners in the confessional. He died in 1907 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1991.
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