Pope beatifies 110 Poles, including Nazi martyrs

Pope John Paul II in Warsaw on Sunday

June 13, 1999
Web posted at: 7:32 AM EDT (1132 GMT)

WARSAW, Poland  -- Pope John Paul II on Sunday conducted one of the biggest mass beatification ceremonies of his more than 20-year pontificate, honoring 110 Poles who died for their beliefs or dedicated their lives to charity. 

Beatification is the next-to-last step on the road to sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church. 

Some 108 clergy and lay people were beatified for martyrdom suffered during Poland's violent occupation by Nazi German forces during World War II. Most were shot, gassed or died from maltreatment in concentration camps. 
 

The pope also beatified Regina Protmann, daughter of a wealthy 16th-century family who founded an order of nuns to minister to plague victims in northeastern Poland. 

The other non-martyr was Edmund Bojanowski, a 19th-century charity worker who founded a religious order and was active in organizing passive resistance to Prussian repression. 

But for the nearly 1 million people present at the beatification mass in Warsaw's central Pilsudski Square, the most resonant stories were those surrounding the Nazis' victims, some of whose families are still alive. 

The pope drew special attention to the fate of Archbishop Julian Nowowiejski, who at the age of 83 was beaten, stripped naked and humiliated by concentration camp guards for refusing to step on his bishop's cross. 

Vatican intervention saved Bishop Wladyslaw Goral from a death sentence but he died of malnourishment in Sachsenhausen just months before the camp was liberated. 

The Catholic Church was severely repressed by the Nazi Germans in Poland, who saw it as a focus of resistance to their rule. Many of the priests who were arrested were accused of continuing their religious work illegally. 

Others, including Father Jozef Pawlowski who was hung in Dachau in 1942, were jailed for trying to help Jews in Poland. 

Father Zygmunt Pisarski was arrested and shot in 1943 for refusing to betray communists, who would have faced certain death if they were caught. 
 

Hundreds of thousands gather at Warsaw's central Pilsudski Square

Laity were also on the papal list, including Marianna Biernacka, 55, who volunteered to take the place of her pregnant daughter-in-law who was picked out for a reprisal execution by a German firing squad. 

The pope also honored five young Catholics beheaded in the courtyard of a Dresden prison for resistance work and two priests who cared for those wounded in the heroic but unsuccessful Warsaw Uprising in 1944. 

Earlier in his 13-day trip the Pope beatified another priest who died in the Dachau camp during World War II and on Wednesday he is due to canonize the Hungarian-born 13th-century Polish princess Kinga, reknowned for her chastity.