Łubieński was the second of twelve children born in Guzów, Poland, to Count Tomasz Wentworth Łubieński and Adelajda, née Łempicka, Pomian clan members of the Polish nobility, and of a prolific and entrepreneurial family, considered once as magnates. He was the great grandson of Justice Minister and family patriarch, Felix Hr. Łubieński and his writer wife, Tekla Teresa Łubieńska who had wrested back the vast Guzów estate from Prussian state sequestration after the third Partition of Poland, gaining a Prussian title in the process. He was moreover the grandson of the anglophileHenryk Łubieński, industrialist, financier and co-founder of the Mill town of Zyrardów. His siblings were, Henryk, Zofia, Roger, Maria, Zygmunt, Adam, Michał, Irena, Celina, Teresa and Tomasz. At around the age of six, Łubieński was farmed out to his father's pious relatives, Maria and Felix Szymanowski, who had recently lost an infant son and was raised together with their surviving son, Teodor who was a few months older. The children were home schooled in Warsaw and Cygów until the age of eleven, when in the autumn of 1858 Bernard and his older brother, Henryk, were sent to an English Catholic boarding school, Ushaw College in County Durham. There were relatives in Herefordshire, since a cousin of their father's, Irena Dzierżykraj-Morawska, had left Poland to marry Charles de La Barre Bodenham, from an ancient English recusant family and the Łubieński boys would visit them at their stately home, "Rotherwas".
Monastic career
Much to the disapproval of his father and of an uncle who was a bishop, :pl:Konstanty Ireneusz Łubieński, Łubieński became a postulant in the Clapham community in 1864 and then entered the Redemptorist novitiate in England, having been previously rejected by the Jesuit order. After theological and philosophical studies in Witten, Netherlands, he was finally ordained in Aachen in Germany in 1870. He returned to England and went to Clapham to do pastoral work and look after Polish exiles in London. He travelled to Perth, Scotland to train in missionary work, visited Ireland and attended courses in Bishop Eton, in Liverpool while ministering to local people. In England, he worked as an archivist for the order and rose to be the Provincial bursar. In 1879 his brother, Roger, invited him on a furlough visit to Poland where he met the Austrian Redemptorist Provincial, who had been previously contacted by Łubieński's English provincial, Robert Coffin. Between them, they agreed that the order should expand its mission back into Poland. The Redemptorists had been expulsed from the Grand Duchy of Warsaw by Napoleon in 1809. In 1881 a former Dominican monastery was bought in Mościski, Przemyśl diocese, by the Austrian province of the order. In 1882 having closed down his affairs in London, Łubieński returned to Poland — via Rome and an audience with pope Pope Leo XIII - after a 25-year absence, to participate in the re-introduction of the Polish Province of the Redemptorists and to be nearer to his large extended family. In 1885 he succumbed to influenza accompanied by paralysis, which after treatment, left him lame for the rest of his life. He was offered the of Mohilev, but turned it down on grounds of poor health and because of his inclination for holding retreats, missionary work and writing. In any event, he identified strongly with the simple life of the French priest, Jean Vianney. He led retreats for all sections of society, including priests and religious. He became a respected and sought-after preacher and, as a descendant of a family of past Polish Primates, is said to have spiritually influenced four successive future Primates of Poland,. By the end of his ministry he is said to have conducted 244 missionary trips across all three Partitions of Poland, 508 retreats and refurbished 54 churches and built two. After his death in Warsaw, aged 86, those close to him opined that he had died in the "Odour of sanctity". On 6 March 2018Pope Francis promulgated a decree about the heroic nature of Łubieński's virtues, which carries with it the title of "Venerable".
