Pope approves beatification for priests martyred under Nazism and Communism
By Tiziana Campisi
Eleven new Blesseds will soon be venerated in the Church. During an audience granted to Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, on Friday, Pope Leo XIV authorized the promulgation of decrees concerning the martyrdom, out of “hatred of the faith,” of nine Polish Salesians, killed between 1941 and 1942, in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau; and of two diocesan priests from the former Czechoslovakia, murdered between 1951 and 1952 during the persecution carried out against the Catholic Church by the communist regime established in the country after the Second World War.
Martyred by the Nazis
Salesians Jan Świerc, Ignacy Antonowicz, Ignacy Dobiasz, Karol Golda, Franciszek Harazim, Ludwik Mroczek, Włodzimierz Szembek, Kazimierz Wojciechowski, and Franciszek Miśka – all religious men engaged in pastoral and educational work – were victims of Nazi persecution following the German occupation of Poland on 1 September 1939, which was unleashed with particular ferocity also against the Catholic Church.
Uninvolved in the political tensions of the time, they were arrested simply because they were Catholic priests. The special fury reserved for the Polish clergy, who were insulted and persecuted, can be seen in the actions taken against them. In the concentration camps, the religious offered spiritual comfort to their fellow prisoners and, despite the humiliations and tortures endured, continued to manifest their faith. Mocked with insults to their ministry, they were tortured and killed outright, or lost their lives on account of the inhuman conditions of their imprisonment.
Aware that their pastoral ministry was considered by the Nazis as opposition to the regime, they nonetheless continued their apostolic work, remaining faithful to their vocation and serenely accepting the risk of being arrested, deported, or killed.
Martyrs under the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia
Fathers Jan Bula and Václav Drbola, of the Diocese of Brno were killed in Jihlava, out of hatred for the faith. Because of their pastoral zeal, both were considered dangerous by the communist regime that had been established in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and had begun open persecution against the Church.
Even though he had been arrested on 30 April 1951 and remained in prison, Father Bula, the victim of a conspiracy by the state secret police, was accused of inspiring an attack on 2 July 1951 in Babice in which several communist officials were killed. He was tried and sentenced to death, and on 20 May 1952, was hanged at the prison in Jihlava.
Father Drbola, arrested by deceit on 17 June 1951 also accused of involvement in the Babice attack while imprisoned in the same jail, and was condemned to death and executed on August 3, 1951.
Deceived and imprisoned through a plot devised by false witnesses, the two priests endured violence and torture that led to the distortion of events and were eventually forced to sign false confessions of guilt. They were convicted and sentenced to death in show trials managed by the regime.
Aware of the dangers they faced in that context of intense hostility toward the Church, and despite the harshness of imprisonment and the tortures endured, they accepted their fate with faith and trusting abandonment to the will of God, as attested by the letters they wrote before execution and by the testimony of the priest who heard Jan Bula’s confession.
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