Father Sapieha was despatched first to Jazłowiec (college) to act as chaplain to the school and to the attached convent in Yazlovets in the Archdiocese of Lwów,[1] before, in October 1895, he started further studies in Rome.
Sapieha was appointed Bishop of Kraków on 24 November 1911 and was consecrated by Pope Pius X in the Sistine Chapel on 7 December of the same year.
After World War I, Sapieha became a vocal opponent of the new concordat negotiated between the Holy See and the newly resurrected Polish state.
Sapieha thought that the Poles themselves should decide their affairs without outside influence and asked Ratti to leave the conference room.
In September 1930, after opposition leaders were arrested and placed in confinement at Brest Fortress, Archbishops Sapieha and Teodorowicz strongly criticized the government.
During World War II, while Primate August Hlond was in France, Sapieha was the de facto head of the Polish church in jurisdictions directly annexed by the Third Reich (primate Hlond was represented by Walenty Dymek, auxiliary bishop of Poznań) and was one of the main leaders of the nation[citation needed].
[6] In August 1944, Sapieha was forced to operate the Polish seminary in secret because the Germans began killing seminarians whenever they found them.
He moved his students (including the future Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyła) into the Bishop's Palace in Kraków to finish their training during the Nazi Occupation of Poland.
[7] Sapieha's biographer, Jacek Czajkowski describes the circumstances of the archbishop being invited by Governor Hans Frank to Hitler's birthday party in April 1942.
Another such anecdote recalls when governor Hans Frank ordered the archbishop to hand him the keys to the Wawel Castle.
[11] In 1949, he proposed that Stefan Wyszyński, Metropolitan Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw since 12 November 1948, should be termed Primate of Poland.
[citation needed] In the 2005 CBS miniseries Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Sapieha was portrayed by American actor James Cromwell.