Today, September 27, Fr. Pietro Paolo (Pedro Pablo) Oros, a martyr priest killed by the communist regime in 1953, was beatified in Ukraine, when he was only 36 years old.
This beatification has been a long -awaited event, since in August 2022 Pope Francis approved the decree that recognized the martyrdom of P. golds, but this could not be carried out so far because of the war and for the death of the Argentine pontiff.
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Pope Leo XIV and the new Blessed
At the Jubilee Audience he presided today, Pope Leo XIV prayed for the intercession of the martyr priest, so that the Lord of strength and hope for the Ukrainians before the war.
“Today, in Bilki (Ukraine), the priest Pietro Paolo Oros, of the Eparquía de Mukachevo, murdered in 1953 for hate to faith, has been beatified,” said the Pope in his greetings to the faithful present in the Plaza de San Pedro on the occasion of the jubilee of the catechists.
“When the Greco-Catholic Church was declared illegal,” said León, “he remained faithful to Pedro’s successor and continued courage to exercise her ministry clandestine, aware of the risks.”
“We invoke the intercession of this new Blessed, to obtain for the beloved Ukrainian people the strength to persevere in faith and hope, despite the drama of war,” concluded the Holy Father.
The new blessed did not teach with the written word but with life
The divine liturgy of the beatification was presided, on behalf of Pope Leo XIV, by the Polish Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś, archbishop of łódź.
“Today we proclaim a martyr for whom the cross was not only death, but the entire life,” said the cardinal, he reports Vatican Newsand also highlighted his “deep faith and spirituality” of golds, whose knees “were hard as soles by force of praying.”
The new Blessed, said the Polish cardinal, “did not teach with the written word; he taught with life, with the example.” In him, he continued, “they converged in a single attitude, they were like the two profiles of his face. He was poor because he gave, he knew how to be poor. In the rectory where he lived there was only a very simple table and some chairs.”
After warning that because of the war in Ukraine, many have died and many others have lost everything, Cardinal Ryś stressed that “precisely today, in such dramatic circumstances, when you have every right to think about yourself first, Blessed P. Pedro tells you: Be merciful!”
After highlighting that Fr. Oros was a bridge between Western and Eastern Christianity, also with atheists, the archbishop said that the life of the martyr and that of his brothers priests “arrested, persecuted, tortured, killed, killed in prison” teach “powerful and radical love, in life and death.”
Who was the martyr Pietro Paolo Oros priest?
Pietro Paolo Oros was born on July 14, 1917 in the town of Biri (Hungary), within a Greco-Catholic family, in which his father was a priest, something allowed in the eastern rites of the Catholic Church.
According to one biography Del Blessed, published by the Dicastery for the causes of the Saints, in 1937 entered the Uzghorod Seminar and on June 18, 1942, he was ordained a celibate priest of the Greco-Catholic Eparquía of Mukachevo (Ukraine), which covered this country and three others: Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.
In 1944, the territory where he worked was occupied by Soviet troops from the Red Army and annexed to Ukraine and then to the USSR. Thus began the persecution of the Greco-Catholic Church. In 1946 he was transferred to Bilki, in the Irshava district, as a pastor. From 1948, the pressure intensified to become the Russian Orthodox Church, but did not yield.
In 1949, pastoral activities were prohibited and all Greco-Catholic churches were closed. Mukachevo’s Greco-Catholic Eparquía herself was abolished. However, he continued to exercise his ministry in hiding, aware of the risks, such as the fact that he was guarded by secret services.
On August 28, 1953, a policeman stopped him at the Tren’s Station of Sil’ze (Soviet Union) and killed him by shots.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.