Pope Francis on Friday, August 5, gave the green light to the beatification of Péter Orosz, a Ukrainian bishop shot in the Soviet Union in 1953.
The pope recognized theheroic virtuesof the religious and authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate it “venerable“, first step towards beatification, announced the press agency Vaticans News.
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The Vatican also recognizes the martyrdom “in hatred of the faithof the prelate, born in 1917 in Hungary into a Greek-Catholic family. Appointed a priest in 1942 in Mukacevo, in western Ukraine, he was secretly ordained auxiliary bishop in 1944. After the war, he was ordered to join the Russian Orthodox Church, but refused. On August 27, 1953, he was arrested in Siltse (at that time in the USSR, now in Hungary) while he “brought the Eucharist to a sick personand shot.