RIGHTEOUS SAINTS

 

At this time while we are in the Alleluia season, it is fitting to remember some saints who have been acknowledged for their part in protecting others during WWII.

 In the years since the tragic murder of more than six million Jews in the Holocaust, the nation of Israel has honored thousands of non-Jews who risked their lives to protect Jewish people from the Nazis and their collaborators.

Righteous Among the Nations is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis. The term originates with the concept of "righteous gentiles", a term used in rabbinic Judaism to refer to non-Jews.

These men and women are honored with the title Righteous Among the Nations, and they range from royalty to day laborers.

Recently, some holy Catholic men and women were recognized by the nation of Israel for risking (or giving) their lives to save Jewish people from the Nazis.

Among their number are one saint and six blesseds (as well as a venerable, and four servants of God), all of whom should inspire us as we fight the evil of anti-Semitism that continues in our world today.

Bl. Odoardo Focherini (1907-1944)  (Blog  2/6/2018) was an Italian journalist and father of seven children. In 1942, he was informed of the presence of some injured Polish Jews who had recently arrived in the country, and set out to smuggle them to safety. Soon, he was procuring false papers for any Jewish people he found and helping them make their way to neutral Switzerland. He was eventually caught and sent to die in a concentration camp, but not until he had helped more than 100 Jews evade the Nazis.

Bl. Sara Salkahazi (1899-1944) was a Hungarian Sister who had been a chain-smoking journalist and a Socialist before entering religious life. Though she struggled to fit in with her order, she was ultimately permitted to make vows and became a powerful worker in the vineyard, publishing a Catholic women’s periodical, establishing a working-class women’s college, and running a Catholic bookstore in addition to all her charitable works. 

She changed her name to the more Hungarian-sounding Salkahazi to needle the Nazis, and began to work to hide Jews and smuggle them to safety. She’s credited with single-handedly saving at least a hundred Jewish lives during WWII and helping her Sisters to save another 900. In 1944, Sr. Sara was returning to the home where she was hiding Jews when she saw Nazi soldiers. Rather than save herself, she chose to die with those she loved. She approached and was arrested, stripped, and shot on the banks of the Danube.

St. Elizabeth Hesselblad (1870-1957) was born in Sweden to a Lutheran family. She encountered the Catholic faith while working as a nurse in New York City and converted. From then on, she was deeply concerned with ecumenical work and with serving non-Catholic Christians and non-Christians. She became a second founder of the Bridgettine order and during World War II she and her Sisters hosted several people whose lives were in danger, including a dozen Jewish men, women, and children. Though at first unaware of their religion, when Mother Elizabeth found out that they were Jewish, she and the Sisters went out of their way to be welcoming and affectionate, even encouraging the children in their Hebrew prayers. All 12 survived the war.

(Other Righteous Among the Nations with open causes for canonization include Venerable Elia dalla Costa, Servant of God Jacques de Jésus, Servant of God Giovanni Palatucci, Servants of God Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma.(Blog 1/28/20).