Priest killed by the Nazis is beatified

Carl Lampert, the highest representative of Austria’s Catholic Church to be killed for opposing the Nazis, was officially beatified yesterday, exactly 67 years after his death.

Cardinal Angelo Amato, who oversees the Vatican’s canonisation process, read out a papal decree elevating Fr Lampert just one step below sainthood before a crowd of 1,700, including people from Poland and Germany, in Dornbirn.

A minute of silence was also held at 4 p.m., the time of Fr Lampert’s execution on November 13, 1944. Fr Lampert, the former vicar general of Innsbruck, was sentenced to death three times for opposing the Nazi regime and finally executed by guillotine at a prison in Halle an der Saale in eastern Germany in 1944.

He was accused of high treason, espionage, undermining army morale and aiding the enemy.