Italian priest who died at Dachau to be beatified

P(ANSA) – Vatican City, April 22 – An Italian priest who died at Dachau is about to be beatified for his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust. Father Giuseppe Girotti will receive the title of “Blessed,” one level beneath sainthood, on Saturday in the town of Alba, in northwestern Italy.BRIn attendance representing Pope Francis – busy preparing for the canonizations of popes John XXIII and John Paul II on Sunday – will be Cardinal Giovanni Coppa, an Alba native. Girotti is among 1,500 priests who perished at the Dachau Nazi concentration camp in Germany during World War II. Born in 1905 to a very poor family, he was ordained in the Dominican order in 1930. In 1939 his anti-Fascist sympathies raised the ire of Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship, which led to his suspension as a biblical theologian and his transfer to a convent. In 1944 his efforts to shelter Jews led to his own detainment and deportation, after falling into a Nazi trap under the false pretense of coming to the rescue of a Jewish professor’s son. He died on Easter the following year of cancer.BRhttp://popefrancisnewsapp.com//P
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