The Vatican has declared as martyrs as Austrian and a German, both Roman Catholic priests who died at the hands of the Nazis.
The declaration, announced Friday in a Vatican statement, could eventually lead to the canonization of the two priests.
Pope John Paul II attended the ceremony.
Austrian priest Otto Neururer was tortured to death at the Buchenwald concentration camp, the statement said.
German priest Karl Leisner was ordained in 1944 while he was a prisoner at Dachau. He died in August 1945 from a lung disease he contracted there.
The two men were part of a group of 12 Roman Catholics from various countries and various times in history to whom miracles, martyrdom or “heroic virtues” were formally attributed by the Vatican department that examines candidates for sainthood.
The pope recently said that he would announce this summer that an anti-Nazi German priest, the Rev. Bernhard Lichtenberg, would be put on the path to sainthood.
Lichtenberg, who died en route to Dachau, denounced the Nazis from his Berlin pulpit and closed his service with a prayer for the persecuted Jews.
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