The Vatican on Sunday beatified a Polish family of nine, including a married couple and their young children, who were executed by the Nazis during World War II for providing shelter to Jews. The beatification ceremony took place during a solemn Mass in the Polish village of Markowa, with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the papal envoy, reading the Latin formula for beatification, which Pope Francis signed last month.
A contemporary painting depicting Jozef and a pregnant Wiktoria Ulma with their children was unveiled near the altar, marking the first instance of an entire family being beatified. Relics from their grave were brought to the altar during the ceremony.
Speaking from a window in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Pope Francis praised the Ulma family as a "ray of light in the darkness" during the war and urged everyone to emulate their acts of goodness and service to those in need. He invited the crowd to applaud the family, emphasising their exceptional courage, news agency Associated Press (AP) reported.
Last year, Pope Francis declared the deeply Catholic Ulma family, including Wiktoria Ulma's unborn child, as martyrs for their faith, according to the report. They were tragically killed at their home by German Nazi troops and local police under Nazi control in the early hours of March 24, 1944, after what appears to have been a betrayal.
Jozef Ulma, 44, was a farmer, Catholic activist, and amateur photographer who documented family and village life. He lived with his 31-year-old wife Wiktoria; their daughters Stanislawa, 7; Barbara, 6; Maria, 18 months; and sons Wladyslaw, 5; Franciszek, 3; and Antoni, 2. Along with them, eight Jews they were hiding in their home, including Saul Goldman and his sons Baruch, Mechel, Joachim, and Mojzesz, as well as Golda Grunfeld and her sister Lea Didner and her young daughter Reszla, were also killed.
Lt Eilert Dieken, head of the regional Nazi military police and later a police officer in Germany after the war, gave the orders for the execution. Only one of his subordinates, Josef Kokott, faced prosecution for the killings in Poland and died in prison in 1980. The betrayer is suspected to be Wlodzimierz Les, a member of the Nazi-controlled local police. According to Poland's State Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), he was sentenced to death and executed by the country's wartime resistance in September 1944.
According to AP, the Catholic Church faced a theological dilemma in beatifying Wiktoria's unborn child, as it had not been baptized, a requirement for beatification. The Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints issued a clarification stating that the child was considered "born" during the horrific event and thus received "baptism by blood" from its martyred mother.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, and Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, attended the beatification ceremony, joined by thousands of pilgrims from across Poland.
The beatification ceremony holds significance in Poland's political landscape as it aligns with the ruling Law and Justice party's emphasis on family values and wartime heroism, as per the report. The party seeks a third consecutive term in the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 15.