Digi24 presents the life of Prince Vladimir Ghika (who will be proclaimed Blessed by the Catholic Church during a solemn Mass presided by Cardinal Amato in Bucharest on the 31st August 2013):
Un sfânt îngropat f?r? cruce. Monseniorul Vladimir Ghika a murit la Jilava, dup? doi ani de tortur?
Priest who died of hunger in Communist prison to be beatified | CatholicHerald.co.uk
A priest who died of cold and hunger in a Communist prison will be beatified as a martyr in Romania. Archbishop Ioan Robu of Bucharest said the sanctity of
Mgr Vladimir Ghika had “given us an important new example of a life lived for Church and faith”. Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes, is scheduled to celebrate the beatification Mass in Bucharest’s Romexpo exhibition centre on Saturday.
Archbishop Robu said that Mgr Ghika would represent many other “unknown and unrecognised Christian martyrs” who died in Romania during four decades of Communist rule, which ended in December 1989. “This latest beatification proves the Church doesn’t forget those who generously gave their lives in this way, whose testimonies can still be understood and valued by contemporary society,” the archbishop said.
Mgr Ghika was born on December 25, 1873, in Istanbul, where his father was Romania’s representative at the Ottoman court. He was one of six children in an Orthodox family. He studied in Paris and in Toulouse, France, his mother’s home country, and received a theology doctorate in 1898 at Rome’s Dominican College. He was received into the Catholic Church on April 15, 1902, but was persuaded by Pope Pius X, whom he knew personally, to remain a lay man in order to evangelise more effectively among non-Catholics.
After aiding the sick in Thessaloniki, Greece, he moved to Bucharest, where he founded Romania’s first free clinic, as well as a hospital and sanatorium, before returning to France to care for the displaced and wounded during the First World War. In 1921, he was awarded the Legion of Honor for helping restore France’s diplomatic ties with the Holy See. On October 7, 1923, he was ordained in Paris and was authorised to conduct liturgies in both the Latin and Eastern Catholic rites.
Mgr Ghika returned to Romania at the outbreak of the Second World War to organise help for refugees and bombardment victims. Having rejected advice to leave the country after the Communists seized of power, he was arrested on November 18, 1952, for refusing to break ties with the Vatican, and survived more than 80 violent interrogations before being sentenced to three years’ incarceration at Romania’s infamous Jilava prison, where he died, emaciated, on May 16, 1954.
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