Some 30,000 people attended the beatification of the Ulma family in the Poland on Sunday 10 September, the first time an entire family has been beatified.
The beatification Mass for Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children, who were martyred during World War II for sheltering two Jewish families from the Nazis, took place in the family’s village of Markowa in southeastern Poland.
“It would be misleading if the day of the beatification of the Ulma family served only to bring back to memory the terror of the atrocities perpetrated by their executioners, on whom, by the way, the judgment of history already weighs heavily,” Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, said Sept. 10 in his homily at the beatification Mass.
“Instead,” the cardinal continued, “we want today to be a day of joy, because the page of the Gospel written on paper has become for us a lived reality, which shines brightly in the Christian witness of the Ulma couple and in the martyrdom of the new Blesseds.”
Operation “Reinhardt”, a program aimed at murdering all of the Jews in Germany-occupied Poland, began to be implemented in the Ulma family’s area of Poland in late July and early August 1942.
The Nazis began to deport the roughly 120 Jews in the Markowa area to a labour camp and extermination camp. Approximately 54 Jews in hiding were found and shot on December 14, 1942. An additional 29 Jews continued to hide in Markowa, including the eight who found refuge with the Ulma family.
Early on March 24, 1944, a Nazi patrol surrounded the home of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma on the outskirts of Markowa. They discovered the Jewish people hiding on the Ulma farm and executed them.
The Nazi police then killed 31-year-old Wiktoria, who was pregnant and in premature labor, and 44-year-old Józef outside their home.
An additional order sealed the fate of the remaining family members: “Kill the children, too.”
Stanisława, 7; Barbara, 6; Władysław, 5; Franciszek, almost 4; Antoni, 2; and Maria, 1, were executed.
The seventh Ulma child to die was the couple’s unnamed son, who was in the process of being born. The boy had been incorrectly described in some news reports as the first unborn child to be beatified, a key detail that the Vatican recently clarified. Though there was no time to baptise the child, what transpired instead was what the Church calls a “baptism of blood”.
In his reflections on Sunday, Cardinal Semeraro also made a point to honour the memory of the Ulmas’ Jewish friends who also were killed that day.
“Today, together with the new Blesseds, we also want to remember their names,” he said. They were: Saul Goldman with his sons Baruch, Mechel, Joachim, and Mojżesz, as well as Gołda Grünfeld and her sister Lea Didner, together with her young daughter Reszla. Among those at the beatification ceremony Sunday was Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich.
During his Angelus prayer in Rome on Sunday, Pope Francis called the Ulmas “a model to imitate in our efforts to do good and serve those who are in need”.
“In response to the hatred and violence that characterised those times, they embraced evangelical love,” he said.
The Pope added that the Polish family “represented a ray of light in the darkness of the Second World War” and invited everyone to offer a round of applause for the new Blesseds.
Pope Francis went on to urge Christians to follow their example by “opposing strength of arms with charity, and violent rhetoric with tenacious prayer”.
“May we [pray] especially for the many countries that suffer due to war,” he said. “In a special way, let us intensify our prayers for martyred Ukraine… which is suffering greatly.”
Beatification in the Catholic Church is one step before canonisation, when a person recognised for special holiness is officially declared to be a saint. Those beatified receive the title “Blessed” and may receive public veneration at the local or regional level, usually restricted to those dioceses or religious institutes closely associated with the person’s life.
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