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His Excellency

Eduard von der Ropp
His Excellency; Eduard von der Ropp
Archbishop of Mohilev
Church	Roman Catholic
Archdiocese	Mohilev
Appointed	25 July 1917
In office	1917-1939
Predecessor	Wincenty Kluczyński
Successor	Boļeslavs Sloskāns
Previous post(s)	Bishop of Tiraspol (1902–1903); Bishop of Vilnius (1903–1917)
Orders
Ordination	2 August 1886
Consecration	16 November 1902; by Bolesław Hieronim Kłopotowski
Rank	Metropolitan Archbishop
Personal details
Born	December 15, 1851; Līksna, Dvinsky Uyezd, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	July 25, 1939 (aged 87); Poznań, Poland
Buried	Poznań Cathedral
Nationality	Latvian

Eduard Michael Johann Maria Freiherr^[1] von der Ropp (1851–1939) was a Polish^[2] nobleman of Baltic German origins and Roman Catholic metropolitan archbishop. He was born 14 December 1851 near Līksna in present-day Latvia^[3] and died on 25 July 1939 in Poznań, Poland.^[4]

Early life

Eduard von der Ropp was the third of four sons of Emmerich Julius Freiherr von der Ropp, a Polonized descendant of the Baltic German nobility. His father was a direct descendant of Theodoricus de Raupena, the eldest brother of Bishop Albert who founded the city of Riga in 1201. His mother, Izabela Józefa Plater-Zyberk, daughter of civil vicegovernor of Vilnius Michał Plater-Zyberk, was from a family which owned estates at both Lixna (Līksna) in Latgale (then Vitebsk Governorate) and Bewern (Bebrene) in Sēlija (then Courland Governorate) .

He received his university education in Saint Petersburg and graduated in 1875.^[3] After graduation he remained in Saint Petersburg working for the Russian government. In 1886, he decided to enter the Roman Catholic seminary in Kaunas.^[5] In 1889 he was ordained priest for the diocese of Samogitia.^[3]

After ordination, Fr. von der Ropp was sent to Liepāja in Courland where he worked as a parish priest for 13 years. There he began enlargement of a small church building into what is now the Cathedral of St. Joseph.^[3] In 1893 he was given additional responsibility as the vicar of all parishes in Courland.^[5]

Episcopal ministry

Von der Ropp was appointed bishop of Tiraspol in southern Russia on 9 June 1902 by Pope Leo XIII.^[6] He was ordained bishop in Saratov on 16 November 1902.^[3]

Only a year later on 9 November 1903 he was appointed bishop of Vilnius by Pope Pius X.^[7] On 2 December 1903, von der Ropp was installed in Vilnius Cathedral. He traveled back to Saratov in 1904 to co-consecrate his successor as bishop of Tiraspol Josef Alois Kessler on 10 November.

After the 1905 revolution, von der Ropp was elected to the first Duma.^[8] In 1907 he was exiled to Tbilisi in the Caucasus by the Imperial Russian Government.^[5]

On 25 July 1917, he was appointed metropolitan archbishop of Mohilev by Pope Benedict XV.^[9] He returned to Saint Petersburg to take up this post, and, following the February Revolution, Archbishop von der Ropp, decreed that all his priests would take a role in organizing a Christian Democratic Party to participate in the planned Russian Constituent Assembly in order to defend the rights of the Catholic Church in Russia. In this, the Archbishop was sharply opposed by both Auxiliary Bishop Jan Cieplak and Monsignor Konstanty Budkiewicz, who both opposed any politicization of the Catholic religion.

After the October Revolution, Archbishop von der Ropp came into conflict with the new Soviet Union. In 1919, he was arrested during the Red Terror by the CHEKA and received a death sentence for anti-Soviet agitation,^[10] but was instead deported to the Second Polish Republic in 1920 on the intercession of the Holy See.^[5] Pope Pius XI appointed him an assistant at the Pontifical Throne on 28 May 1927.^[11]

Unable to return to Russia, he lived in Poland with one of his nephews until his death in 1939.^[10] He traveled to Latvia in 1924 to attend the ingress of Archbishop Antonijs Springovičs at the Cathedral of St. James in Riga on 4 May and to co-consecrate the new auxiliary bishop of Riga Jāzeps Rancāns the same day.^[12] Von der Ropp is buried in the Archcathedral Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul, Poznań.^[10]

References

^ Regarding personal names: Freiherr is a former title (translated as 'Baron'). In Germany since 1919, it forms part of family names. The feminine forms are Freifrau and Freiin.
^ "Kurier Litewski", no. 101 (19 April 1915)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Jānis Svilāns and Alberts Budže (2008), Latvijas Romas Katoļu Priesteri, I, p. 229, ISBN 978-9984-29-152-9
^ Necrologio, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, Volume 31 (1939), p. 332
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Jānis Broks (2002), Katolicisms Latvijā 800 Gados: 1186-1986, Vēsturisks Atskats, p. 250, ISBN 9984-619-40-0
^ Ex actis consistorialibus, Acta Sanctae Sedis, Volume 34 (1902), p. 656
^ Ex actis consistorialibus, Acta Sanctae Sedis, Volume 36 (1904), p. 276
^ Christopher Lawrence Zugger (2001), The Forgotten: Catholics of the Soviet Empire from Lenin through Stalin, p. 97, ISBN 0-8156-0679-6
^ Provisio ecclesiarum, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, Volume 11 (1919), p. 102
^ ^a ^b ^c Svilāns and Budže (2008), p. 230
^ Assistenti al Soglio Pontificio, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, Volume 19 (1927), p. 292
^ Broks (2002), p. 310

Bibliography

(in German) "Ropp", Neue Deutsche Biographie, Duncker & Humblot GmbH, Berlin (2005), vol. 22, pp. 33–35, ISBN 3-428-11291-1
(in German) "Rosen", Neue Deutsche Biographie, Duncker & Humblot GmbH, Berlin (2005), vol. 22, pp. 49–50, ISBN 3-428-11291-1