Childhood and Youth

Ignacy Antonowicz was born on 14 July 1890 in Więsławice, in the parish of Kowal, in the Włocławek district, as the son of Jakub and Jadwiga Valerius. In 1901 he entered the Salesian secondary school in Oświęcim, where he remained until 1905. He belonged to the first group of students of the Oświęcim institution. According to tradition, it was he who saved the Salesian Institute in Oświęcim from collapse by drawing the winning ticket in a lottery organized by Fr. Franciszek Trawiński and donating the prize to the Salesians.

Salesian Path

He completed his novitiate formation in Daszawa under Fr. Piotr Tirone. In August 1909 he made his perpetual vows in Italy, in Lanzo Torinese. He pursued philosophical studies in Rome, where he later obtained a doctorate in theology at the Gregorian University (1912–1916). He carried out his practical training in Radna at the Philosophical Studentate and spent two years in Ljubljana. He was ordained a priest on 22 April 1916 in Rome by Bishop Capotosti. After ordination, in the years 1916–1917, he lectured in dogmatic theology in Salesian houses of study in Italy, in Foglizzo and later in Cavaglià, attended also by Polish students.

From 1919 he served as a chaplain in General Haller’s army in Italy, France, and Poland. In the years 1919–1920 he was a professor at the Philosophical Studentate in Kraków, and later again a military chaplain until 1921, when he was awarded the Cross of Valour. In 1923–1924 he was a professor of theology in Oświęcim and editor of “Pokłosie Salezjańskie.”

He later became a catechist at the Oświęcim institution, then director of the Salesian house and secondary school in Aleksandrów. In subsequent years he served as director in Różanystok.
On 1 July 1934 he was appointed Councillor of the Kraków Province, a role he held until the end of 1936. In 1936 he became Rector of the Theological Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Kraków.

He was exemplary in religious life in every respect, a prudent educator, much sought after as a spiritual director in the confessional, and outstanding as a professor. He enjoyed universal esteem.
He was arrested while returning from pastoral ministry as a confessor to religious sisters.

Arrest

On the tragic day of 23 May 1941, on the eve of the feast of Mary Help of Christians, he shared the fate of a group of Salesians from Kraków. As the director of the house at 39 Tyniecka Street, he was arrested and imprisoned together with others in the Montelupich prison in Kraków. There, mock trials, blasphemies, and brutal abuse inflicted upon completely defenceless and innocent Salesians exhausted Fr. Antonowicz.

After a short time in the Kraków prison, he was transferred with others to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. He returned to the city where forty years earlier he had first crossed the threshold of the Salesian house—then as a young boy, now as a mature man, full of spiritual strength, a courageous son of Don Bosco.

Beatification Process

Fr. Ignacy Antonowicz is one of the 122 Servants of God for whom the second beatification process of the second group of Polish martyrs of the Second World War began on 17 September 2003.
On 24 May 2011, the diocesan phase concluded in Pelplin, and all documentation was forwarded to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome.

The Positio was submitted on 21 July 2022, and its relator was Fr. Szczepan Tadeusz Praśkiewicz, OCD. The postulator of the cause is Fr. Pierluigi Cameroni, General Postulator for the Causes of the Salesian Family, who collaborates with Dr. Mariafrancesca Oggianu.

On Tuesday, 28 March 2023, the historical consultors of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints issued a positive opinion regarding the Positio suppletiva super martyrio of Fr. Jan Świerc and eight companions, priests of the Society of St. Francis de Sales, murdered in odium fidei in German extermination camps in the years 1941–1942.

On 24 October 2025, Pope Leo XIV ordered the publication of the Decree on Martyrdom and its inclusion in the records of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

On 1 May 2026, Pope Leo XIV signed an Apostolic Letter allowing the Servants of God to be called Blessed and designated 23 May as the day of their liturgical commemoration. On 6 June 2026, the beatification ceremony took place at the Shrine of St John Paul II in Krakow.