Father Joseph Walijewski (1924-2006), a missionary to Latin America, is now part of a long list of Americans who are being studied by the Church for possible sainthood.
Father Walijewski's cause for beatification opened by Bishop William P. Callahan, bishop of the Diocese of La Crosse, WI, March 19, 2013. Dr. Andrea Ambrosi will be the postulator. Walijewski was born to poor Polish immigrant parents in Grand Rapids, Michigan on March 15, 1924; ordained priest for the Diocese of La Crosse in April 1950; and began missionary work in Bolivia in 1956; he died on April 11, 2006, suffering pneumonia and acute leukemia. Father Joseph also served in Ecuador and Peru. While in Peru, he helped organize breakfast stations that fed 8,000 children per day where he founded in 1987 the Lima orphanage Casa Hogar Juan Pablo II, the House of John Paul II.
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