Pope to Beatify Polish War Victims

Pope John Paul II will beatify 108 Poles who died at the hands of the Nazis during World War II, when he visits his native Poland in June, the Vatican has announced.

The Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints cleared the way for beatification, the last step before sainthood, by certifying at a ceremony attended by the pope that all 108 had died as martyrs to their faith.

John Paul will declare the group blessed at a Mass he will celebrate in Warsaw on June 13 during a 12-day visit that will take him to 20 Polish cities and include an address to the National Assembly. He will be in Poland from June 5 to 17.

The pope, who was a member of the Polish underground during World War II, has been criticized by Jewish groups in the past for singling out the relatively small number of Catholics who died alongside millions of Jews in Nazi death camps.

The newly declared martyrs include three bishops, 78 priests, eight nuns, seven monks, three seminarians and nine lay people. Seventy-six of them died in Nazi death camps, 46 at Dachau, 14 at Auschwitz and the rest at Sachsenhausen and Stutthof.

Among them are Sister Kemensa Staszewska, put to death in Auschwitz because she had tried to hide Jewish girls in her convent, and Maria Anna Biernacka, a widow who asked Nazi occupation forces to arrest her instead of her pregnant daughter-in-law.