WelCom March 2023
The beatification date has been announced for a family of nine who were killed by the Nazis for hiding a Jewish family in their home in Poland.
The Archdiocese of Przemyska announced that the entire Ulma family – Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children, including one unborn child – will be beatified on 10 September.
Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, will preside over the beatification ceremony in Markowa, the village in southeast Poland where the Ulma family was executed in 1944.
Pope Francis recognised the martyrdom of the couple and their children in a decree signed in December. The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre has honoured the Ulmas as Righteous Among the Nations for the sacrifice of their lives.
Early on 24 March 1944, a Nazi patrol surrounded the home of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma on the outskirts of the village of Markowa in southeast Poland. They discovered eight Jewish people who had found refuge on the Ulma farm and executed them.
They then killed Wiktoria, who was seven months pregnant, and Józef. As children began to scream at the sight of their murdered parents, the Nazis shot them: Stanisława, 8, Barbara, 7, Władysław, 6, Franciszek, 4, Antoni, 3, and Maria, 2.
Fr Witold Burda, the postulator for the Ulma family, has said that a Bible was found inside the Ulma house in which the parable of the Good Samaritan had been underlined in a red pen.
‘They built their family on the foundation of faith with fidelity to the two essential commandments: the commandment to love God and the commandment to love one’s neighbour,’ Fr Burda said.
Source: CNA News
