FIFTEEN Roman Catholic nuns have been declared blessed martyrs, eight decades after being murdered by Russian soldiers in Poland. One was shot while resisting rape; two others were dragged to their deaths behind a speeding truck.
“They all gave supreme witness of faith in the context of an ideological struggle that sowed persecution and death, violence and destruction in the Europe of their time,” the Prefect of the Dicastery for Saints’ Causes, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, said. “Today, these blessed martyrs confirm the eternal value of divine goodness, while their murderers are remembered only for the cruelty and evil they committed.”
Cardinal Semararo was preaching at a beatification mass in Braniewo for Sister Cristofora Klomfass and 14 other members of the Order of St Catherine the Virgin-Martyr, who were killed by Red Army troops during their early 1945 counter-offensive through Poland.
The Soviet soldiers had engaged in cruelty, he said, which crossed “all boundaries”, and showed “no respect” for the nuns’ religious dignity. Their beatification should also be a moment to remember other victims from the same period, and to call for peace in Ukraine and across the world.
The 15 nuns, aged between 26 and 64, included Maria Abraham, an orthopaedic nurse, who died from being beaten shortly after recovering from tuberculosis, and Rozalia Angrick, who was shot in the neck after rejecting advances by soldiers who broke into her convent at Lidzbark. Two others, Agata Bonigk and Barbara Rautenberg, died after being pulled behind an army truck. Others were buried in unmarked graves after being deported to Soviet labour camps.
The beatification postulator, Lucja Jaworska, said that the order lost more than 100 nuns, many of whom had remained at their posts as nurses, teachers, and childcare specialists despite the dangers.
In 1999, 108 Polish wartime martyrs were declared blessed by St John Paul II, who also beatified 11 Polish nuns from the Holy Family of Nazareth order, executed by the Gestapo at Nowogrodek in 1943. Beatification processes are under way for more than 200 others. A young parish priest, the Revd Stanislaw Streich, was beatified as a martyr on 24 May, 87 years after being shot by a pre-war communist during a parish mass near Poznan.
Addressing crowds in Rome on Sunday, the Pope said that the nuns had persevered in serving the sick and orphaned “despite a climate of hatred and of terror”, and that their martyrdom was a reminder of the service done by nuns worldwide.