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Acknowledgment: |
VATICAN (CWN) --- On Sunday, March 15, Pope John Paul II presided at beatification ceremonies for three Servants of God:
- Brigitte Morello (1610-1679) was born into a large Italian
family, and her desire to enter religious life was frustrated by her
mother's illness. Charged with the responsibility of helping to care
for her nine brothers and sisters, she prayed instead for a happy
marriage, and in 1633 she did marry Matthew Zancari. But their
happy marriage ended with his death four years later; the union did
not produce children. She herself fell gravely ill, and vowed that if
she recovered she would devote her life to God. She founded the
house of St. Ursula in Piacenza in 1649, and served the remaining
years of her life-- through persistent problems with ill health-- to
educate youngsters and care for the poor.
- Carmen Salles y Barangueras (1848-1911) was born outside
Barcelona, Spain, and from her youth nurtured a special devotion to
the Virgin Mary. Despite her parents' desire that she should marry,
she entered the entered religious life and in 1892 founded the
Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, seeking to fulfill her plan for
"the formation of young people, using the heart to reach the intellect
as well." The order she founded now boasts 60 communities in 11
countries, stretching across all of the world's continents.
- Eugen Bossilkov (1900-1952) is the first victim of Stalinism
to be beatified, as well as the first Catholic from Bulgaria-- a
predominantly Orthodox population-- to claim that honor. Having
been invited to visit Bulgaria, Pope John Paul II had hoped to
conduct the beatification ceremony in that country, but divisions
within the Orthodox Church there led to a postponement of the papal
visit, and thus led to the beatification in Rome.
Born in Belene, on the Danube, Vincent Bossilkov took the name
"Eugen" when he entered the Passionist community. A promising
student, he was assigned to study in Rome, where he wrote a thesis
on the union between the Church in Bulgaria and the Holy See. That
intellectual proposition was tested when, having become bishop of
Nicopoli, he was asked by the Communist government to renounce
his attachment to Rome. When he refused, he was arrested and
tortured.
Bishop Bossilkov was apparently killed by a firing squad in 1952. His
surviving niece reports that at their last meeting he said, "I have the
sense that the Lord has given me the grace to accept death." Because
of the intense secrecy that enshrouded the Soviet death camps, his
death was never officially accepted by the Holy See until 1975, when
the new Bulgarian head of state, Todor Zikov, an anti-Stalinist,
confirmed that he had been killed.
Acknowledgment: to the right.
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