Józef Cebula, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetJózef Cebula
Beatified by Catholic church
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Gogolin, Opole Voivodeship, Poland
About Józef Cebula
- Józef Cebula (23 March 1902 – 9 May 1941) was a Polish priest of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI). Born on 23 March 1902 into a modest family in Malnia, Poland, Joseph Cebula was the eldest of three children.
- He suffered tuberculosis as a youth and was declared incurable at first; but after his recovery, he went to an Oblate shrine and shared his story with Father Jan Pawolik.
- Pawolik suggested he study at the minor seminary at Krotoszyn.
- Cebula completed his secondary studies there.
- In 1921 he began his novitiate at Markowice.
- He studied philosophy in Liege, Belgium, and finished his theological studies at Lubliniec.He was ordained as a priest on 5 June 1927 while still in a seminary.
- Father Cebula became a superior at the Oblate seminaries in 1931, and became novice master at Markowice in 1937.Two years later, when the Germans occupied Poland, they declared loyalty to the Church illegal.
- In October 1939 the 100 member community at Markowice was placed under house arrest, and set to work as farm laborers.
- On 4 May 1940, the Oblate novices at Markowice were sent to the concentration camp at Dachau in Upper Bavaria, Germany.
- However, Father Cebula continued to minister as a priest in secret despite the ban on it.
- After being denounced for administering the sacraments to the sick he was arrested by the SS on April 2, 1941 and sent to the camp at Inowroclaw.
- On April 7, he was taken to a concentration camp at Mauthausen in Austria and was harassed and forced to hard labor.
- On 9 May, Father Cebula suddenly summoned up his strength and said, "It is not you who are in charge.
- God will judge you." The Nazis ordered him to run with a rock on his back, towards the camp's barbed wire fence, where a guard shot him to death with a submachine gun and declared that Father Cebula "was shot while trying to escape".
- His body was taken to a crematorium and burned to ashes.He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 13 June 1999 as one of the 108 Martyrs of World War II.
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