On Sunday, September 10, Italy and Poland joined in an ideal embrace as long as the applause that Pope Francis invited the faithful to raise in St. Peter’s Square in honor of the Ulma family, beatified that very day in Markowa by Cardinal Semeraro.
An entire family of blesseds shines from heaven upon our humanity, still scarred by wars and divisions: Giuseppe and Vittoria Ulma and their seven children (one of whom was yet to be born), who were not afraid to give their lives so that love might prevail, amid the darkness of the Second World War and Nazi persecution.
The martyrdom faced out of love
It is 1944, and when the systematic deportation to concentration camps of Jews living in Polish territory begins, only those who manage to find shelter and hide with neighbors are saved. In doing so, these neighbors knew they were putting their own lives at risk.
Even in Markowa, there are those who have the courage not to look the other way, those who have eyes to see and hands to help their brothers and sisters: the Ulma couple hide eight people in their home. One day, they are discovered by a police officer, who reveals the hiding place to his superiors.
It was March 24, 1944, when Giuseppe and Vittoria were captured and executed; their unborn child, who would have been born shortly afterward, also died with the mother. The desperate crying of the six children (the oldest of whom was 8, while the youngest was just 1 and a half) annoyed the Nazis, who turned their weapons on them as well, massacring them. In 1995, the Ulma family was recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations”, and the Polish Parliament declared March 24 the “National Day of Remembrance for Poles who Saved Jews during the German Occupation.”
The Gospel as a lived reality
“The sacrifice of the family of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their children, who did not hesitate to give their lives to help eight people of Jewish origin, may be for us and for future generations a symbol of fidelity to values that must never be betrayed, not even in the face of the threat of death,” Pope Francis said. Cardinal Semeraro also emphasized the dimension of the Gospel lived out fully when he observed: “We want today to be a day of joy, because the page of the Gospel written on paper has become for us a lived reality, shining brightly in the Christian witness of the Ulma couple and in the martyrdom of the new Blessed.”
Saints are those who believe that any darkness can be illuminated and, because they believe it, are then capable of illuminating every darkness; saints are those who are not afraid to lose their lives, because they trust in Jesus and know that, by losing them, they will keep them alive in love!
We look to this family to learn how to live the Gospel in the ordinariness of our lives.
