50,000 Turn Out as Pope Beatifies 3
About 50,000 people turned out to greet Pope John Paul II in Vienna’s Heldenplatz, or Heroes’ Square, where hundreds of thousands poured in to welcome Adolf Hitler in 1938. The pope beatified three people, including a nun, Sister Restituta Kafka, who was arrested by the Gestapo for putting up crosses in a hospital in a challenge to the Nazis. She was beheaded in 1943. Beatification is the last step before sainthood. “Sixty years ago . . . a man [Hitler] proclaimed himself the savior,” the pope said. “Those newly beatified have a different message. They tell us: Not in a human lies salvation,” but in Jesus Christ.
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