Jan Beyzym was born in Stari Beizymy,
Russian Empire (now
Ukraine) on 15 May 1850 as the eldest of five children to Jan Beyzym and Olga. His father was a freedom fighter and in 1863 was sentenced to death in absentia for his activities. He moved with his mother and siblings to
Kiev and studied there from 1864 until 1871. He completed his education in Kiev and on his father's advice joined the
Jesuits. He was a
novitiate from 10 December 1872 to 1874 at
Stara Wies. During his novitiate there was a
cholera epidemic and he received the permission of his superior to go out into the streets to tend to the sick. Beyzym received his
ordination as a priest on 26 July 1881 in Kraków from Bishop
Albin Dunajewski. After his ordination he taught French and Russian until 1898 at Jesuit boarding schools in
Tarnopol and
Chyrów. In 1898 he left to join the Jesuit missions to lepers near Tananariwa in
Madagascar. Beyzym left Poland on October 17, 1898 and arrived on 30 December at Red Island before being posted to Ambahivoraka near
Antananarivo. In October 1902 he began to see the construction of a leper hospital at Marana and it was finished and inaugurated on 16 August 1911. Beyzym died on 2 October 1912 at the age of 62; his health declined and he had
arteriosclerosis and sores simultaneously, which confined him to bed. His body exhumed and relocated back to his native Poland on 8 December 1993 at a Jesuit church. ==Beatification==