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Appointed bishop of the diocese of Kraków on 24 November 1911, Sapieha was consecrated by Pope Pius X in the Sistine Chapel on 7 December of the same year. In 1915 he established a life-saving committee for war-stricken people. After the WWI he was one of the main representatives of Polish Episcopacy objecting to concordat. He reckoned that Polish church should be utterly independent and its primate should be the Archbishop of Warsaw. This attitude led to conflict with Achille Ratti – e.g.: during the first post-war congress of Polish bishops in Gniezno (26-30 August 1919), Sapieha asked Ratti to leave conference room because as he thought: Polish church wants to adjudge its affairs without foreign influences. Sapieha did not receive galero during the pontificate of Pius XI, whom became Ratti in 1922. Bishop Sapieha was elected senator from Christian Union of National Unity in 1922. He ordered memorial service and made a proclamation about assassination of Gabriel Narutowicz. It was the only speech he delivered as a senator because he had to subordinate to papal proscription about receiving public dignities by church hierarchs; he applied mandate on 9 March 1923. Sapieha was appointed archbishop in 1925. He received a degree honoris causa from the Jagiellonian University in 1926. After arresting the leaders of the opposition and putting them in Brest Fortress in September 1930, archbishops Sapieha and Teodorowicz became supporters of denouncing the government. He was awarded in 1936 with the White Eagle Order. Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapieha, an opponent of the Józef Piłsudski regime (sanacja), in 1937 made the controversial decision to move Piłsudski's body from the St. Leonard's Crypt to the Crypt under the Silver Bells, although both crypts are in Wawel's Cathedral.

In 1939 he asked Pope for dismissal due to his age and health condition. After Pope’s death he repeated his request to Pius XII on 19 June 1939. Due to forthcoming war and at Józef Beck’s instigation he withdrew his request.