The ceremony for the beatification of Szilárd Bogdánffy, Latin auxiliary bishop of Oradea Mare and martyr of the communist persecution, will be officiated by card. Péter Erdö, primate of Hungary and president of Ccee, in the cathedral of Oradea Mare, in Romania (30 October, at 11 am). Dead on 2 October 1953 in the Rumanian jail of Nagyenyed, Bogdánffy was born on 21 February 1911 in Feketetó/Crna Bara. Ordained priest in 1934, he had begun his pastoral work in the diocese of Satu Mare (Szatmár) and Oradea of the Latins, of which in 1948 he was appointed auxiliary bishop, and was consecrated in secrecy on 14 February 1949 in the apostolic nunciature of Bucharest from the hands of bishop Gerald Patrick O’Hara, who was the Rumanian nuncio back then. Charged with conspiracy against the State, Bogdánffy was arrested by the communist secret police in September that year and taken to several jails of the regime in an ordeal of sufferings and humiliations that lasted four years. Early in 1953, we was sentenced to 12 years’ hard labour by the judges of the Military Court of Oradea and confined the next August to the jail of Nagyenyed, where he found his death. Through to the end, suffering from pneumonia, he was denied all care. On March 27th, Benedict XVI authorised the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints to promulgate a degree about his martyrdom.

© SIR - october, 28th 2010