St. Stanislaus Kostka (SNV 25) Keychain

If bullied youngsters need a heavenly advocate, they need look no further than St. Stanislaus Kostka. Not to be confused with his namesake St. Stanislaus Szczepanowsky of Krakow (1030-1079), St. Stanislaus Kostka (1550-1568) was a young Polish nobleman who was bullied at his Jesuit boarding school in Vienna by his own brother Paul who found his younger sibling’s religious fervour and amiable personality trying. Having run away from school and against the wishes of his family, he joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1567. Not 10 months later, he died of a fever on the Feast of the Assumption at the tender age of 17 in, as the saying goes, the odour of sanctity. + Feast: November 13 + Image Credit (SNV 25): Antique image of St. Stanislaus Kostka from a late 19th-century devotional print in chromoxylography published by St. Norbertus Verlag, Vienna, Austria, from the designer’s collection of religious ephemera.