First beatification of an unborn child on 10th September
Józef and Wiktoria Ulma are truly an inspiration to Precious Life.
Józef and his wife Wiktoria, heavily pregnant at the time of her death, sheltered families of Jews from the Nazis. They knew what it would cost them and their family if they were ever discovered, but they couldn't turn their backs on their neighbours.
This Sunday (10th September 2023), in the Polish village of Markowa, something momentous is happening. This will be the remarkable occasion of the entire Ulma family being beatified at once. Their seventh child will become the first unborn child to be beatified.
Under the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II, Jews were indiscriminately arrested, imprisoned, and killed. Christians who helped them hide or escape placed themselves in the same peril. Josef and Wiktoria Ulma sheltered a Jewish family in their village. As a result, Josef, Wiktoria, and their seven small children – one not yet born – were murdered by the Nazis.
When the Nazis came for the Ulmas, it was the dead of night and everyone was sleeping. But the Nazis knew exactly what they would find: they had been tipped off. They didn't spare a single person inside the home - not the Jewish families, not Józef and Wiktoria and their unborn child, not even the Ulma children: Stanislawa, age 8; Barbara, 7; Wladyslaw, 6; Franciszek, 4; Antoni, 3; and Maria, 2.
After their deaths, a Bible inside their home was discovered to have the parable of the Good Samaritan underlined in red ink. They had truly lived Jesus' call to love their neighbour as themselves.
Their heroic virtue and sacrifice has now lead to their beatification. Their story is a bright light shining in the darkness. Through it, God is saying to us something the world cannot hear - that each and every human person is infinitely precious in His sight.
Józef and his wife Wiktoria Ulma are an inspiration to Precious Life as we "love our unborn neighbour" by standing outside the killing centres in Northern Ireland. We will never turn our backs on those precious little babies when and wherever their lives are in danger of abortion.
The heroic story of the Ulma family is told in a new book - No Greater Love
