Father Giuseppe Girotti, martyred in Dachau concentration camp at the age of 40 because of his efforts to assist the Jews, has been beatified in Alba, Italy.
According to the current English edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the April 26 beatification of the Dominican exegete was conducted by Cardinal Severino Poletto, Turin’s retired archbishop.
Coverage of the beatification was eclipsed by the canonization of Saints John XXIII and John Paul II the next morning.
Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, declared Girotti a “Righteous Among the Nations” in 1995. The title is given only to non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save them from extermination by the Nazis.
Arrested in August 1944, Father Girotti had suffered “deep and total humiliation” at Dachau, L’Osservatore Romano reported.
Dachau, located about 10 miles northwest of Munich in southern Germany, was the first regular concentration camp established by the National Socialist (Nazi) Government.
Although the exact number of those killed there will never be known, the number of prisoners incarcerated there between 1933 and 1945 exceeded 188,000, the website of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum claims. (D.C.L.)
