New Blesseds in the Church: The Ulma Family from Poland
An entire family has been beatified, that is, raised to the step before official canonization. The beatification took place on Sunday, September 10, 2023.
From Vatican News:
The nine members of the Ulma family were beatified on Sunday in their Polish hometown of Markowa, where they were martyred by Nazi soldiers for harbouring Jews during World War II. Pope Francis upheld the family’s actions as model of Christian life for everyone to follow, as he spoke at the Angelus prayer on Sunday. He 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 characterized 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…”
[snip]
Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, presided over the beatification Mass in Markowa, [Poland], which was concelebrated by 7 Cardinals and 1,000 priests, with over 32,000 faithful registered to attend.
The beatified family members are Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma, and their children Stanisława, Barbara, Władysław, Franciszek, Antoni, Maria, and an unnamed child who was born at the moment of Wiktoria’s martyrdom.
OSV News offers this short film history of the Ulma family of Blesseds:
The saintly lives and heroic deaths of the Ulma family from Jason Nees on Vimeo.