There he met professor of theology, Michał Sopoćko who had been the spiritual director of a recently deceased young nun, Faustyna Kowalska (1905–1938).

This devotion was symbolised in a painting that was commissioned by Sopoćko from his colleague at Stefan Batory University, the professor of Art, Eugeniusz Kazimirowski.

In 1941 he succeeded in evading the Soviet authorities and made his way into exile through Russia and Japan to the United States where he worked as a chaplain to various Polish communities.

[4] In the late 1940s Jarzębowski was summoned by his order to the United Kingdom to work with the thousands of Poles displaced there after the war and living in resettlement camps.

Alongside the school Jarzębowski used the Grade I listed 17th-century manor house, as the home of his extensive antiquarian library and museum where valuable polonica had been assembled as well as items of wider European historical interest, to which other deposits and loans were added by Polish collectors.

After his escape from war-torn Poland, he once again took up teaching in the 1940s at Santa Rosa in Mexico where he was assigned to a school for displaced and orphaned Polish children.

It became a religious and cultural centre for Poles in the South of England and beyond, hosting large numbers of visitors on feast days, especially at Pentecost.

Although the priests formed the backbone of the College staff, they were complemented by secular women and men teachers, supported by a parents' association, the broader Friends of Fawley Court and frequent visitations from high-ranking prelates.

Although Jarzębowski gradually withdrew from active participation in the college, due to health problems and to concentrate on his spiritual and historical interests, the momentum he had given to the setting continued for a further 20 years after his premature death in 1964.

The new generation of priests from the Polish province who arrived to replace the old guard were raised in communist Poland and appeared to be at sea coping with an English stately home and its management.

[14] The Marian order's energies and finances were anyway being strained by a massive new sanctuary project in Poland and Jarzębowski's dream for Fawley Court fell victim to other congregational priorities.

The Jarzębowski collection also contained: an armoury of the 16th–19th centuries of European, Asian and Far Eastern provenance, other militaria ranging from the last Polish uprising to World War II, French, Portuguese and Polish tapestries of the 16th-18th centuries, Italian Baroque paintings, drawings, including by Annibale Carracci, sacred art including icons, coins, medals and a notable philatelic collection.

[22] In 2010 the Marian Fathers opened a "Józef Jarzębowski Museum" in his honour, as part of their new pilgrim centre at the Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń in Central Poland.