At a special Jubilee audience this Saturday, September 27, Pope Leo called on a newly beatified priest to pray for the people of Ukraine.
He said:
Today, in Bilki, Ukraine, Father Peter Paul Oros, of the Eparchy of Mukachevo, killed in 1953 in hatred of the faith, is being beatified. When the Greek Catholic Church was outlawed, he remained faithful to the Successor of Peter and courageously continued to carry out his ministry clandestinely, aware of the risks. We invoke the intercession of this new Blessed, that he may obtain for the dear Ukrainian people the strength to persevere in faith and hope, despite the tragedy of war.
Father Oros was recognized a martyr by Pope Francis in 2022 and his beatification was originally scheduled for May 3 of this year. However, with the death of Pope Francis, it was postponed till today. Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś, Archbishop of Łódź (Poland), presided over the celebration.
Zealous apostle
Vatican News recounts the priest's life:
Oros was born on July 14, 1917, in the Hungarian village of Biri, into a deeply Christian family. His father was a Greek Catholic priest and disappeared when Petro was 2 years old. At 9, he lost his mother. In 1937, he entered the seminary in Uzghorod, Transcarpathia, on the Ukrainian-Hungarian border.
On June 18, 1942, he was ordained a celibate priest of the Greek-Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo, Ukraine, and began his pastoral service in a number of villages as vice-parish priest, immediately making himself known for his zeal and love for the poor.
In 1943, due to the war, he attended a course for military chaplains in Barca, near Košice, the capital of the region of the same name in Slovakia. He returned to his parish, which, in 1944, ended up, like the entire territory of Transcarpathia, under occupation by Soviet troops of the Red Army and united to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, then to the USSR.
With the forced annexation, the persecution of the Greek Catholic Church began. In 1946, Oros was transferred to Bilky, in the Irshava district, as a parish priest.
Even then, he received pressure to transfer to the Russian Orthodox Church. Pressures that intensified in 1948. He resisted, remaining faithful to the Pope.
In 1949, pastoral activities were then forbidden and all Greek Catholic churches were closed. The Eparchy Mukachevo was also suppressed.
The assassination
Father Oros lived, with awareness and courage, under the cloud of a person under suspicion, controlled by the secret services and exposed to arbitrary arrests and injustice. When, in 1949, the Greek Catholic Church was outlawed and personalities held in esteem in society systematically eliminated, the Servant of God continued to clandestinely carry out his ministry.
An arrest warrant against him was issued in 1953. He tried to escape, but on August 28, a policeman stopped him at the railway station in the village of Siltse and killed him. Immediately the murder was considered a martyrdom, although the priest's body remained hidden until the break-up of the Soviet Union.
