Pope Leo XIV beatifies 11 priests killed by Nazi and Communist regimes, advancing them towards sainthood as martyrs for their faith.
VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo XIV has approved the beatification of eleven priests recognised as martyrs killed by Nazi or Communist regimes in Europe.
This declaration places these individuals one step closer to official sainthood within the Catholic Church.
The group includes Jan Swierc and eight other Polish Salesian priests persecuted between 1941 and 1942 out of hatred for their faith.
They were imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau.
The other Polish priests named are Ignacy Antonowicz, Ignacy Dobiasz, Karol Golda, Franciszek Harazim, Ludwik Mroczek, Wlodzimierz Szembek, Kazimierz Wojciechowski, and Franciszek Miska.
Vatican News stated these men were uninvolved in political tensions and were arrested simply for being Catholic priests.
The report highlighted the special fury reserved for the Polish clergy, who were systematically insulted and persecuted.
In the concentration camps, they endured mockery, torture, and were either killed or perished due to the brutal imprisonment conditions.
The Pope also declared Jan Bula and Vaclav Drbola as martyrs, two diocesan priests killed in Jihlava in the former Czechoslovakia between 1951 and 1952.
Vatican News said their pastoral zeal made them dangerous in the eyes of the communist regime established in Czechoslovakia in 1948.
The communist regime had begun open persecution against the Church at that time.
Bula was accused of inspiring a 1951 attack that killed several communist officials, leading to his death sentence and execution by hanging.
Drbola was also accused of involvement in the same attack and was subsequently executed.
Both priests were tortured into signing false confessions of guilt, according to the Vatican’s official media.
The Catholic Church’s path to sainthood involves three distinct steps: venerable, blessed, and finally saint.
A person is declared venerable when the Pope recognises they lived a heroically virtuous life.
Beatification, the step to becoming blessed, typically requires the Church to recognise a miracle attributed to the person’s intercession.
Martyrdom allows for beatification to occur without the requirement of a recognised miracle.
Canonisation, the final step to sainthood, requires the recognition of one additional miracle for all blesseds. – AFP
