30 Ukrainian martyrs to be beatified.

Pope John Paul II will beatify thirty martyrs during his trip in June. The announcement was made on April 24, when the decrees of martyrdom and heroic virtues and the acknowledgment of miracles of 52 people were promulgated in the Vatican.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, referring to the Ukrainian martyrs, explained that they were Christians "who heroically witnessed their fidelity to Christ and the Roman Pontiff during the Second World War and subsequent years, when the Church and the Ukrainian hierarchy were persecuted by the Communist regime."

"The recent political changes which have taken place in Eastern Europe have finally made it possible to collect the proofs of their martyrdom," he added.

The group includes Mykola Charnetsky, apostolic eparch of Volyn and Pidlyashia, and 25 companion martyrs; to the above martyrs must be added the young Ruthenian Bishop Theodore Romzha, apostolic administrator of Mucacheve, Ukraine, and Emilian Kovtch, priest of the Eparchy of Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) who died in the concentration camp of Majdanek in 1944.

Emilian Kovtch: priest who died for Jews

Emilian Kovtch was born in 1884, in the family of a Greek Catholic priest in a little town in western Ukraine. He studied theology in Lviv, and later in Rome. Ordained a priest in 1911, he began to carry out pastoral work in parishes of Galicia, Ukraine, before being sent to serve Ukrainian immigrants in Yugoslavia. In 1919, he was chaplain to the Ukrainian soldiers fighting the Bolshevik troops.

Father Kovtch was named parish priest in Peremychlyany, a village on the outskirts of Lviv, in 1922. Most of the 5,000 residents were Jewish. Thanks to Father Kovtch's work, pastoral life acquired remarkable dynamism. He organized eucharistic congresses, pilgrimages, boy scout clubs and student youth groups. And he welcomed poor and orphaned children into his home, even though he already had six children of his own.

After the Nazi invasion, Jews began to be persecuted and exterminated. At that time Father Kovtch decided to baptize Jews "en masse" to save their lives providing them with baptismal certificates though this was strictly prohibited. He was arrested in December 1942 and imprisoned. In August 1943, he was deported to the Majdanek concentration camp. He continued to celebrate the eucharistic liturgy there, and to hear confessions. In a letter to his children, he wrote: "With the exception of heaven, this is the only place I wish to be. Here we are all the same: Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Russians. I am the only priest. When I celebrate the liturgy, they pray for all, each one in his own language. Doesn't God understand all languages?"

According to the camp's records, he died on March 25, 1944. On the eve of his death, he wrote to his family: "Yesterday, 50 prisoners were executed. If I wasn't here, who would help them endure a moment like that? What more could I ask the Lord? Don't worry about me. Rejoice with me."