Edward O'Rourke

Edward O'Rourke, full name Eduard Alexander Ladislaus Graf (Count) O'Rourke (Edward Aleksander Władysław O'Rourke; October 26, 1876 in Minsk - June 27, 1943) was a Roman Catholic priest, bishop of Riga and the first head of the bishopric of the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk).

Early life

O'Rourke was born October 26, 1876 in Basin, Minsk, Russian Empire (modern Belarus), to an aristocratic family of Irish ancestry, many of them high officers in the Russian military. They held imperial titles of the Russian Empire and of the German Holy Roman Empire, but also had petitioned to retain the Irish count title as well, which was granted by the Tsar in 1848. His father was Michael Graf O'Rourke and his mother Baltic-German Angelika von Bochwitz. He received a widespread European education and learned a number of languages. After graduating from the famous Jesuit college in Chyrów (then Russia, 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, Switzerland, 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.

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

Free City of Danzig

The Free City of Danzig was split from Germany in 1920. 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 became the first bishop of Danzig as its first head. First having a good relationship with the authorities, who granted him citizenship on 12 June 1926, and the mostly Protestant populatio, he conflicted with the new local Nazis after 1933.

Having hosted synode on 10 to 12 December 1935, growing pressure from the Nazi majority senate made him resign as bishop of Danzig. On 13 June 1938 he was appointed Titular bishop of Sophene ernannt. He adopted Polish citizenship in the same year as well as the office of Domkapitular in Gnesen/Posen. When after September 1939 most Polish bishops fled Poland, the Germans considered him as diocese administrator for western Poland, but O'Rourke soon moved to Rome, where he died on June 27, 1943.

His successor after his death was the bishop of Danzig Carl Maria Splett.

In 1972 his ashes were moved from Campo Verano to his former bishopric to be buried in a crypt in the Oliwa Cathedral.

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

Literature

• Stefan Samerski: Die Katholische Kirche in der Freien Stadt Danzig 1920–1933. Köln u.a. 1991
• Stefan Samerski (Hrsg.): Das Bistum Danzig in Lebensbildern. Ordinarien, Weihbischöfe, Generalvikare, apostolische Visitatoren 1922/25 bis 2000. (= Religions- und Kulturgeschichte in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa 3). Münster/Hamburg/London 2003. ISBN 3-8258-6284-4
• “Documents and Materials for the History of the O'Rourke Family” by Eduard Graf O'Rourke (O'Rourke had travelled to Ireland in the 1920s to research his Irish ancestry)

External links

• (Bd. 8, Sp. 839-843, Autor: Stefan Samerski)
• Religious Life
• University of Freiburg
• University of Innsbruck
• Catholic Church in Latvia
• Catholic Church in Poland
• Das Bistum Danzig, Stefan Samerski, Page 39 Eduard Graf O'Rourke w. portrait
• Document by the Danzig Senate of Freie Stadt Danzig: citizenship of Bishop O'Rourke form 12 June 1926