Who was Saint Raphael?
Joseph Kalinowski, born September 1, 1835 in Vilna, Poland (now Lithuania). He was a teacher of mathematics, engineer who helped design the Odessa/Kiev/Kursk portion of the Trans-Siberian railway, Minister of War, Siberian labor camp prisoner, royal tutor, and eventually ordained priest of the Discalced Carmelite order. He founded multiple Catholic organizations around Poland and the Ukraine, most prominent of which was a monastery in Wadowice, Poland. He died there in 1907, and 14 years later, Karol Wojty&322a, aka Pope John Paul II, was born in the same town. As a priest, Joseph Kalinowski took the name “Raphael of Saint Joseph”. He was beatified by Pope John Paul in 1983, in Krakow, in front of a crowd of over two million people. In 1991, Pope John Paul declared his boyhood hero a Saint. Raphael was the first friar to have been sainted in the Order of the Discalced Carmelites, since co-founder Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591). For more information about his life, please check for
