Saint
Stanislaus Kostka, SJ |
Stanislaus was born of a noble Polish family and attended the Jesuit college in Vienna. After a serious illness and a vision that seemed to call him to the Society of Jesus, he walked from Vienna to Augsburg and then to Rome seeking admittance. St. Peter Canisius had recommended him to St. Francis Borgia, the head of the order at the time. After a brief stay at the Church of the Gesù and the Roman College, Stanislaus entered the novitiate of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, where he died after only about ten months. Though he was in the Society only for a brief while, his sanctity was widely recognized, and he was canonized in 1726.
POLAND, 2000, a postal card for the 450th anniversary of his birth in
2000, Fischer 1071; its FDI cancel appears below
The card features Pierre Le Gros the Younger's multicolored marble work,
The
Death of St. Stanislaus Kostka (1705), in Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, Rome,
and also a portrait of the saint from 1568, the year of his death.
POLAND, 1995, postal card featuring the popular priest Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko,
Fischer 1091
and the Warsaw church named in honor of St. Stanislaus Kostka (though it is
not a Jesuit church)
POLAND, 2000, two cancels featuring the Church of St. Stanislaus Kostka
GREAT BRITAIN - In 1953 Fawley Court near Henley-on-Thames was purchased by the Congregation of Marian Fathers, to be used as a school, Divine Mercy College, for Polish boys, mostly the children of Poles displaced during the Second World War who had found refuge in Britain. The school closed in 1986. But on 2 June 1968 the 400th anniversary of the death of the Polish saint Stanislaus Kostka, SJ was celebrated there and the event was commemorated with this special cancel featuring the arms (horseshoe and crosses) of the Kostka family.
AUSTRIA, 1990, show cancel for the 450th anniversary
of the Jesuits and the 500th of Ignatius' birth
CANADA, 1988 and 2014 cancels for Saint-Stanislaus-de-Kostka,
Province of Quebec, Canada,
named in honor of the Jesuit saint.