Kazimierz Mikołaj Michalkiewicz

Kazimierz Mikołaj Michalkiewicz (1 February 1865 – 16 February 1940) was a Polish Roman Catholic bishop who served as auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vilnius from 1923 until his death. He was also the titular bishop of Thyatira.

Biography Early life and education Michalkiewicz was born into a Polish landed gentry family in , in the region of Samogitia, as the son of Justyn Michalkiewicz and Joanna née Klimaszewska. He completed his secondary education in Vilnius and went to the Seminary in Saint Petersburg, where he was ordained a priest on 23 October 1888. Following his ordination, he studied at the Roman Catholic Theological Academy in Saint Petersburg. He pursued part-time studies, earning a master's degree in theology in 1908. Michalkiewicz also appointed Lithuanian clergy to the majority of parishes in the Vilnius region and designated a chaplain for Lithuanian secondary-school youth. In 1917, he appointed Juozapas Kukta as a member of the cathedral chapter.

Concessions made in favor of the Lithuanians also aroused hostility toward Michalkiewicz among some Poles; this view was held, among others, by Hipolit Korwin-Milewski.

During World War I, he obtained permission from the German authorities to publish the Dziennik Wileński in Polish. On 24 May 1917, he signed a memorandum, together with 43 other Polish activists, calling for the union of the Vilnius Region with Poland, with the reservation of autonomy for minorities. On 10 July 1917, several Lithuanian priests signed a polemical memorandum opposing the Polish act. Michalkiewicz imposed ecclesiastical penalties on them, against which they appealed to Rome. The Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria Eugenio Pacelli called on Michalkiewicz to resign. On 19 June 1918, the Germans deported him to the Benedictine Maria Laach Abbey in the Rhineland. Jan Hanusowicz became the temporary administrator of the diocese, and on 8 December 1918 the newly appointed bishop Jurgis Matulaitis took over the diocese.

Auxiliary bishop of Vilnius Michalkiewicz returned from exile on 26 November 1918 and devoted himself to social work. On 18 August 1920, he was arrested by the Bolsheviks and imprisoned in the Lubyanka in Moscow. He returned from captivity on 22 March 1921.

On 12 January 1923, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Vilnius and titular bishop of Thyatira. He received episcopal consecration on 10 June 1923 from Archbishop Jurgis Matulaitis-Matulevičius, with bishops Zygmunt Łoziński and acting as co-consecrators. After Matulaitis resigned from the diocese, he was elected capitular vicar on 8 August 1925 and governed the diocese until the arrival of Romuald Jałbrzykowski on 8 September 1926.

He died of pneumonia on 16 February 1940 in Vilnius and was buried in the crypt of the auxiliary bishops of Vilnius Cathedral.