A Slovak priest who died from torture and radiation poisoning after forced labour in Czechoslovakia’s uranium mines is the Catholic Church’s latest communist-era martyr to be beatified.
Fr Titus Zeman, a Salesian of Don Bosco who died in 1969, was hailed during a beatification Mass Sept. 30 in Petrzalka Park in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava, the Catholic News Service reported. He was beatified by Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes, also a member of the Salesian religious order.
The Vatican official said Blessed Zeman had been under “genuine persecution” in the years following World War II as the newly installed communist government arrested clergy and suppressed Catholic schools and associations. However, during his priesthood, he had shown “love is stronger than hatred.”
Born in 1915, Zeman joined the Salesians in 1932 and was ordained in 1940.
