Bl. Jan Wojciech Balicki

Jan Balicki was born in 1869 near Rzeszów, Poland, to a poor but devout family. He was ordained in 1892 and studied in Rome at the Gregorian University.

For decades he taught theology at the seminary in Przemyśl and later served as its rector. People knew him above all as a confessor, a priest who heard confessions patiently for hours, and as a spiritual guide. He died of tuberculosis in 1948. John Paul II beatified him in Kraków in 2002.

Jan Wojciech Balicki was beatified in 2002.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.