Franciszek Kareu

Franciszek Kareu, SJ (10 December 1731, Orsza – 11 August 1802, Polotsk) was a Polish-Welsh Jesuit priest, architect, missionary and teacher in the region of modern day Belarus.

[2] Born of a noble Welsh family (Carew), settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, he followed the conventional course of studies available to sons of the landowning class.

He was made Rector of the High School of Orsza in 1782 and took part in the Regional Congregations of 1782 and 1785 which elected successively Cerniewicz and Lenkiewicz, Temporary Vicars General in Russia.

In this period, he funded the purchase of a printing press from which, school manuals, philosophical and theological treatises and devotional books were produced.

Through the establishment of the Jesuits in the Duchy of Parma in 1793, and the letter of endorsement from Emperor Paul I of Russia, the Pope, Pius VII began ecclesiastical mechanisms that eventually resulted in the universal approval of the existence of the Society in 1814.