Edward O'Rourke

Edward Aleksander Władysław O'Rourke was a Polish Roman Catholic priest and bishop, the first head of the bishopric of Danzig (Gdańsk).

Early Life

He was born October 26, 1876 in Basin, Minsk (modern Belarus), to an aristocratic family of distant Irish ancestry. After graduating from the famous Jesuit college in Chyrów (then Poland, now Ukraine), in 1898 he went to Riga, Latvia, where in 1903 he graduated from the Trade and Mechanics Faculty of the University of Riga. In 1903 he moved to Freiburg, Germany, where he continued his studies at the faculty of law, but the following year he moved to the theological faculty at the University of Innsbruck in Austria-Hungary.

Holy Orders

On October 27, 1908 he was ordained a priest in Wilno (modern Vilnius, Lithuania) and in 1918 he became the bishop of Riga.

Danzig/Gdansk

On April 24, 1922, Pope Pius XI nominated O'Rourke to the post of an Apostolic Administrator of the Free City of Danzig. After the creation of the diocese of Danzig on December 30, 1925, O'Rourke was made its first head. Considered a Pole, he conflicted with the local Nazis.

Final Years

Finally, under pressure from the Nazi senate (although administered by the League of Nations, the Free City of Danzig was German-dominated at that time) in 1938 he was dismissed to Rome, where he died June 27, 1943. In 1972 his ashes were returned to Poland and buried in a crypt in the Oliwa Cathedral,Gdansk.

Ancestry and Relations

• John O'Rourke (1728 - 1786)
• Cornelius O'Rourke
• Lieutenant General Joseph Cornelius O'Rourke (1772 -1849)
• Count Moritz O'Rourke
• Count Nicholas O'Rourke

O'Rourke travelled to Ireland in the 1920s to research his Irish ancestry. He wrote a book “Documents and Materials for the History of the O'Rourke Family.” .

External links

• Religious Life
• University of Freiburg
• University of Innsbruck
• Catholic Church in Latvia
• Catholic Church in Poland