Overview
Prince Jan Duklan Maurycy Paweł Puzyna de Kosielsko (13 September 1842 – 8 September 1911) was a Polish Roman Catholic Cardinal who was auxiliary bishop of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) from 1886 to 1895, and the bishop of Kraków from 1895 until his death in 1911. Named a Cardinal in 1901, he was known for his conservative views and authoritarianism.
Biography
Puzyna was born in 1842 in what was then a part of the Austrian Empire and former part of the Kingdom of Poland, in the diocese of Lwów. He earned a doctorate in law from the University of Lwów on 24 June 1870. He began a career in civil administration, but decided to embrace an ecclesiastical career. Ordained a priest on 1 December 1878, he was a vicar (assistant pastor) at Przeworsk, and then became a Canon of the Cathedral of Przemyśl. He was named auxiliary bishop of the Latin-rite Archbishop of Lwów and titular bishop of Memphis on 26 February 1886. He was consecrated a bishop on 25 March of that same year by Mieczysław Halka-Ledóchowski, with Archbishop Franziskus von Paula Graf von Schönborn of Prague and Archbishop Joseph Sembratovych of Ukrainian rite Lwów. He was translated to the Archdiocese of Kraków on 22 January 1895.
On 15 April 1901, Puzyna was created a cardinal-priest, with the title of Santi Vitale, Valeria, Gervasio e Protasio by Pope Leo XIII. He received his red hat on 9 June 1902.
During the conclave of 1903, acting on behalf of his Sovereign, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, he presented a veto against the election of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla. Puzyna wanted to avoid the election of Rampolla, who was sympathetic to Russia and Germany. Among other things, Rampolla sought to curry favor with Russia by abolishing the Polish language and instituting Russian in the Russian partition's Catholic churches. These were ethnic and linguistic considerations.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).