September 17, 2023 - "The Ulma Family"

Last Sunday Marcello Cardinal Semeraro, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, travelled to the village of Markowa, in southwestern Poland to preside at the beatification of an entire family:  Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children.  They were murdered because they had practiced the corporal work of mercy of sheltering the homeless.
 
This story begins in the winter of 1942.  At that time Germany military and police were operating on Polish territory, and according to their decrees, any form of help or contact with Jews was punishable by death.  That winter Jósef and Wictoria provided shelter for eight Jews in the attic of their home in Markowa.  After the Ulma family was denounced by a policeman on March 24, 1944, they and the eight Jews that they hid were killed.  Israel’s Yad Vashem Institute in 1995 recognized the Ulmas as Righteous Among Nations who gave their lives trying to save Jews during the holocaust.
 
The story became better known in Poland and worldwide when the Archdiocese of Przemyśyl initiated in 2003 a sainthood process for the family.  The process really took off when Pope Francis approved a decree on the martyrdom of the Ulma family on December 17, 2002.  This opened up a path for their beatification.
 
A challenge in all this was the fact that Wiktoria was in the final stages of pregnancy for her seventh child  and had actually started to deliver the baby when the Nazi military police arrived and began killing everyone living on the farm.  The Church faced a dilemma in baptizing Wiktoria’s unborn child and declaring it a martyr because it had not been baptized.  The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints issued a clarification saying that the child was actually born during the horror of the killings and received “baptism by blood” of its martyred mother.
 
About 35,000 people were expected to attend the beatification ceremony yesterday.  That provided some logistical challenges for the farming village of Markowa that normally has about 4,500 people.  Polish clergy and government officials and Poland’s head Rabbi Michael Schudrich were in attendance at the beatification ceremony.
 
In an interview with Vatican News Rabbi Schudrich said that he considered Jósef and Wiktoria to be “mentors.”  In that interview he noted the following: “We ask ourselves, what does God want from us?  How do we know that we should do? Of course, we have many verses in the Bible that are clear.  But it is very helpful to see someone who lives the way God wants us to live.”
 
In St. Peter’s Square last week Pope Francis praised the new blessed as “an entire family exterminated by the Nazis on 24 March 1944 for having given shelter to some persecuted Jews.” Pope Francis continued:
 
“They opposed the hatred and violence that characterized that time with evangelical love.  May this Polish family, which represents a ray of light in the darkness of the Second World War, be for all of us a model to imitate in the zeal for goodness and service to those in need.”
 
Pope Francis went on to urge Christians to follow the example of the Ulma family by “opposing strength of arms with charity and violent rhetoric with tenacious prayer.”
 
Blessed Józef, Wiktoria, Stanislawa, Barbara, Wladyslaw, Franciszek, Antoni, Maria, and Baby Ulma, pray for us!
 
Until next week,
Fr. John