Strachocina
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Strachocina - a birth-place of St. Andrew Bobola.
Strachocina is a relatively big village (ab. 300 houses, 1100 inhabitants, 12 km²) in East Małopolska - the southeastern part of today's Poland. During partitions this region of the country (it belonged to Austria in those times) was called Galicja. This name is still in use too.
Now Strachocina belongs to the Podkarpackie voivodship (county) with the capital in Rzeszow. In earlier, "historical" times the region was called Ziemia Sanocka (The Land of Sanok). Its capital was Sanok - still the biggest town in the close neighborhood. Strachocina is situated almost seven miles west from it. City buses are running there.
Founded in 1369, perhaps as "Szwanczyce" (Święcice - ?). Foundation act, issued by the king Casimir the Great is dated on May 10. 1369. Further history of the village is very unclear. At the place of today's Strachocina once there were as much as four villages at the same time: Strachocina, Strachocina Wola, Szwanczyce and Meszewa.
Local tradition has it that there lived three kinds of people in the village: serfs (persons in a condition of feudal servitude, required to render services to a lord and attached to the lord's land), tenants of the estate and szlachta zaściankowa (village noblemen).
In XVI-XVII centuries tenants of the estate were Bobolas. One of their sons Andrzej was recognized a saint (a martyr) by the Roman Catholic Church. He was born in Strachocina in 1591. Today they are showing in the local church an old baptismal basin made of stone and are asserting that it was used during baptizing the future saint.
At the place of former residence of the Bobolas called now "Bobolowka" there is a park with ancient trees today. In a field chapel that was built in 1990s there are celebrated solemnities dedicated to Saint Andrew.
At the border of the village there is a parish church of St. Catharina from the turn of XIX and XX centuries.
Near it one can find a monument of the Saint Andrew, 600-years old oaks, a St. Maximilian cloister for Nuns and a new-built pilgrim's hostel.
The church is neo-gothic.
Since the end of 1980s Strachocina has been the local center of the cult of St Andrew Bobola. Each May 16 there are celebrity attended by numerous pilgrims.
In woods of Strachocina there is a natural gas mine - now used for underground gas storage mainly for natural gas bought in Russia.