Some 30,000 people attended the beatification of the Ulma family in the Poland on Sunday 10 September, the first time an entire family has been beatified.
The beatification Mass for Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children, who were martyred during World War II for sheltering two Jewish families from the Nazis, took place in the family’s village of Markowa in southeastern Poland.
“It would be misleading if the day of the beatification of the Ulma family served only to bring back to memory the terror of the atrocities perpetrated by their executioners, on whom, by the way, the judgment of history already weighs heavily,” Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, said Sept. 10 in his homily at the beatification Mass.
