Adam Stefan Sapieha - Early Vocation

Early Vocation

After returning to the home country in 1897, he was designated vice-rector of the diocesan seminary in Lwow, where he worked until 1901. He resigned because he was discouraged by the imposed rules of education of young priests. After a half-year trip across the United States of America, he was designated a vicar of the St. Nicholas congregation in Lwow in October 1902. In 1905 Sapieha was appointed a papal chamberlain, and sent to Rome where he was a consultant on matters concerning the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, in the annexed territories, the realization of an idea by Lwow Armenian Catholic Archbishop Józef Teodorowicz (who was the Sapieha's long-term friend) to have a representative of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland at the Roman Curia.

He was educated at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he was also ordained as priest on 1 October 1893 by Bishop Jan Puzyna de Kosielsko (later Bishop of Kraków and Cardinal). Father Sapieha did pastoral work in the Diocese of Lemberg, in whose seminary he served as a faculty member for four years until becoming its rector. In October 1895 he started further studies in Rome, where he obtained a doctorate of civil and canon law at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. At the same time he studied diplomacy at the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles.