WOYWOD, STANISLAUS

Authority on the 1917 Code of Canon Law; b. Guttstadt, Germany, Aug. 10, 1880; d. New York, NY, Sept. 19, 1941. He took his preparatory seminary training in Holland before coming to the U.S. in 1897, then entered the Franciscan novitiate, Paterson, NJ, in 1899, and was ordained June 4, 1906. Three years later he received the lectorate in both theology and Canon Law at the Atheneum Antonianum, the Franciscan international college in Rome. Following his return to the U.S., he was professor of Canon Law in several Franciscan houses and at St. Bonaventure's Seminary, Allegany, NY. In 1930 he was named first superior of Holy Name College, his province's theological house of studies in Washington, DC. During these same years he was editor of St. Anthony's Almanac (now the National Catholic Almanac ) and author of many articles for the American Ecclesiastical Review. In 1918 he published The New Canon Law, a paraphrase of the Code of Canon Law promulgated the year before. This volume, together with A Practical Commentary on the Code of Canon Law (New York 1925), did much to familiarize the English-speaking public with the new legislation. From 1918 until early 1941 his articles and answers to questions on Canon Law and moral and pastoral theology were a standard feature of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review. He prepared constitutions for a number of religious institutes of women in the U.S. and from 1927 to 1930 was vice postulator of the cause of Leo Heinrichs, OFM.

Bibliography: j. p. donovan, "Code and the Homiletic These Thirty–One Years," Homiletic and Pastoral Review 50 (Oct.1949) 38–44. franciscan province of the most holy name, Provincial Annals 3 (October 1941) 177–179.

[b. c. gerhardt]