Bishop Who Aided Jews Is Beatified
Pope John Paul II put three people on the road to sainthood Sunday, including a Hungarian bishop who opposed Nazi attempts to exterminate Jews.
Beatification is the step before sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church. It is usually granted after a miracle is attributed to the intercession of the person, who is given the title “blessed.”
Vilmos Apor, bishop of the Hungarian city of Gyor, died in 1945 after he was shot by a Russian soldier for refusing to hand over 100 women who had taken refuge in his church district.
The pope also beatified Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, who died in 1905 after founding orders of priests and nuns to help Italian immigrants around the world, and Maria Vincenta de Santa Dorotea Chavez Orozco, a Mexican nun born in 1867 who founded an order of religious sisters to help the poor.
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