Titus Zeman

Portrait of Titus Zemans
plaque in the parish church of his birthplace

Titus Zeman SDB (born January 4, 1915 in Vajnory , Austria-Hungary , † January 8, 1969 in Bratislava , Czechoslovakia ) was a Slovak Roman Catholic religious . In the Roman Catholic Church he is venerated as a blessed .

Life

Titus Zeman grew up as the eldest of ten children of Ján Zeman and his wife Agneša, nee Grebečiová, in a religious family. He attended the primary school run by the Salesians in Šaštin and at the age of ten expressed his desire to become a priest. Despite attempts by his parents to dissuade him from his step because of the family's poverty, he entered the Salesian novitiate in 1931 and made his first profession a year later . He studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and in Chieri . On June 23, 1940, he received the sacrament of ordination in the Maria-Hilf-Basilica in Turin . He received his first task as a priest in the oratory of his order in Bratislava. After completing his teaching degree, he worked as a high school teacher for chemistry and biology at the Episcopal Gymnasium in Tyrnau . In 1946 he was dismissed from school for not bowing to the communist school inspectorate's instructions to remove the crosses in the classrooms. He then worked as a chaplain in Šenkvice .

After the communist regime of Czechoslovakia had banned the activities of the Catholic religious orders, almost 900 religious were arrested in Slovakia on April 13, 1950 during the so-called Night of the Barbarians by the state security and interned in collective monasteries. Zeman initially remained free and organized the escape of several clergymen to Italy. After two successful illegal actions in which he smuggled 34 religious and one diocesan priest across the border, he was arrested on April 9, 1951 with 15 other Salesians on a third attempt. He was tortured and sentenced to 25 years in prison on February 22, 1952. His health severely weakened by the prison conditions and further torture, he was released from prison 13 years later on March 10, 1964. From 1967 he was allowed to celebrate Holy Mass again and in 1968, due to the Prague Spring, he was temporarily again active in pastoral care. In September 1969 he suffered a heart attack. After another heart attack, he died in Bratislava.

beatification

A process for his beatification was initiated in 2010. In the same year his bones were exhumed in the cemetery of his birthplace Vajnory and transferred to the neighboring parish church. On February 27, 2017, Pope Francis confirmed the martyrdom of Titus Zeman. The beatification was performed by the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints , Angelo Amato , on behalf of the Pope on September 30 of the same year on the premises next to the family church in the Petržalka district of Bratislava .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Titus Zeman. Biography. tituszeman.sk, accessed on October 3, 2017 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Katrin Krips-Schmidt: He survived the "night of the barbarians". Die Tagespost , September 29, 2017, accessed on October 3, 2017 . 
3. ^ ^{A b c d} Slovak Salesian Titus Zeman is beatified. donbosco.de, accessed on October 3, 2017 . 
4. ^ Promulgazione di Decreti della Congregazione delle Cause dei Santi. In: Daily Bulletin. Holy See Press Office , February 27, 2017, accessed October 3, 2017 (Italian).