Wikipedia
Strachocina (, Strakhotyna) village in Subcarpathian Voivodeship, the southeastern part of Poland. During partitions this region of the country (it belonged to Austria in those times) was called Galicia. It contains about 300 houses and 1100 inhabitants, and is about 12 km² It is the birthplace of St. Andrew Bobola.
Strachocina belongs to the Podkarpackie voivodship county with the capital in Rzeszów. In earlier times the region was called Ziemia Sanocka (The Land of Sanok). Its capital was Sanok, which is still the largest town in the close neighborhood. Strachocina is situated almost seven miles west.
Its foundation act, issued by King Casimir the Great is dated on May 10, 1369. Further history of the village is unclear. At the place of today's Strachocina once there were as much as four villages at the same time: Strachocina, Strachocina Wola, Szwanczyce and Meszewa.
Local tradition has it that there lived three kinds of people in the village: serfs (persons in a condition of feudal servitude, required to render services to a lord and attached to the lord's land), tenants of the estate, and szlachta zaściankowa (village noblemen).
In 16th-17th centuries tenants of the estate were Bobolas. One of their sons, Andrzej, was recognized a saint ( a martyr) by the Roman Catholic Church. He was born in Strachocina in 1591. Today they are showing in the local church an old baptismal basin made of stone and are asserting that it was used during for the baptizing of the future saint. In a field chapel that was built in 1990s there are celebrated solemnities dedicated to Saint Andrew.
At the border of the village there is a parish church of St. Catharina from the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. Near it one can find a monument of the Saint Andrew, 600-year-old oaks, a St. Maximilian cloister for Nuns, and a new-built pilgrim's hostel. The church is neo-gothic.
Since the end of 1980s Strachocina has been the local center of the cult of St Andrew Bobola. Every May 16 there is a celebration attended by many pilgrims.
In woods of Strachocina there is a natural gas mine, which is now used for underground gas storage, maily for natural gas bought in Russia.