Francis Dzierozynski

Francis Dzierozynski was a Polish Catholic priest and Jesuit who became a prominent missionary to the United States. Born in the town of Orsha, in the Russian Empire, he entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained a priest in 1806. He taught and studied in Polotsk and Mogilev until leading students in an escape from the French invasion of Russia in 1812. He returned to Polotsk, where he taught until the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Russian Empire in 1820. Thereafter, he took up teaching in Bologna, Italy.