Franciszek Ksawery Wierzchleyski

Archbishop Wierzchleyski was born in the szlachta Polish Roman Catholic family in the present day South-Western Poland. After graduation of the gymnasium education, he subsequently joined Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Lviv, but left his studies, because of his decision to become a priest. After that, Wierzchleyski joined Faculty of Theology of the University of Vienna and was ordained as priest on June 25, 1826,[1] and completed his philosophical and theological studies, but without Doctorate in the Theology, because of his appointing as a professor of the Holy Scripture in the Franciscan Major Seminary in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska in 1827.[2]

After his ordination, he served as a parish priest in the Our Lady Nativity parish in Holohory (1834–1845) and a dean of the Zolochiv deanery. From 1845 until 1846 he served as a collaborator of the Metropolitan curia.[2]

On July 27, 1846, he was confirmed by the Pope Pius IX as a Dicesan Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Przemyśl. On October 4, 1846, he was consecrated as bishop by Armenian Catholic Archbishop Samuel Cyryl Stefanowicz and other prelates of the Roman Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church[1] in the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Lviv.[2]

On December 6, 1859, with the death of the previous Metropolitan, he was selected and on March 23, 1860, was confirmed by the Holy See as a Metropolitan Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lviv.[2] In 1869–1870 he participated in the First Vatican Council in Rome.

Archbishop Wierzchleyski died, while in the office, on April 17, 1884, and was buried in the crypt of the Cathedral Basilica.[2]