Salesian Martyr Fr. Titus Zeman Beatified

Blessed Titus Zeman’s remains are presented in a specially designed casket at the beatification Mass. (ANS)

Cardinal Angelo Amato, SDB, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, beatified Salesian Fr. Titus Zeman, martyr, on Saturday, September 30, in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Fr. Zeman in his youth

Fr. Zeman had been arrested in 1951 by the Communist authorities of what was then Czechoslovakia, charged as a traitor and a Vatican spy for smuggling young Salesians out of the country, and sentenced in 1952 to prison. He was paroled after 12 years, his health broken. His death on January 8, 1969, due to heart failure, was a direct result of the torture he had experienced during interrogation and in prison.

Fr. Zeman’s prison “mug shots.” (Salesians of Don Bosco)

Fr. Zeman’s cause as a martyr was initiated in Bratislava in 2010, and in 2016 the CSC declared he was a martyr who had suffered “in hatred of the faith.” Pope Francis approved the decree of beatification earlier this year.

Fr. Zeman became the second Salesian beatified as a martyr at the hands of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. In 2013 Bro. Stephen Sandor was beatified in Budapest; he had been hanged in 1953 by the Hungarian government for the “crime” of youth ministry. A third potential martyr’s cause was just initiated (October 6) in Poznan, Poland, that of Archbishop Anthony Baraniak, SDB (1904-1977), archbishop of Poznan (1957-1977), described by the current archbishop as a “martyr of the Communist system, a man persecuted and tortured in prison by Stalin’s investigators.”

National celebration of Slovak martyr

Poster promoting the beatification program.

(ANS)

Blessed Titus’s beatification ceremony was attended by about 25,000 people, including Slovak Cardinal Jozef Tomko, 25 bishops and the apostolic nuncio, about 500 priests, 200 seminarians, the Rector Major (Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime), the postulator general (Fr. Pierluigi Cameroni), two of Fr. Zeman’s sisters, and other relatives. One of the priests present was Fr. Al Pestun, 89, of the San Francisco Province, parochial vicar of Corpus Christi Parish in San Francisco. He is the last surviving Salesian whom Fr. Zeman attempted to lead from Czechoslovakia to Austria and on to Turin; the attempt was unsuccessful, but seminarian Bro. Pestun escaped later.

Cardinal Amato preached that “to donate his life for his brothers was Blessed Titus Zeman’s ideal. He was arrested because he helped seminarians and priests to flee the country so as to live their apostolic ideal. His imprisonment was transformed into a sacrifice of redemption for others."

On the following day, October 1, there was a celebration in Vajnory, the section of Bratislava where Blessed Titus was born on January 4, 1915, and where he died. Fr. Angel Fernandez, the Salesian Rector Major, preached the homily at this celebration, focusing on the timeliness of Fr. Zeman’s witness in view of the upcoming synod of bishops on “Young people, faith, and vocational discernment.” His relics were placed at a side altar of the parish church where he had been baptized and confirmed and celebrated his first Mass in 1940.

The reliquary-casket with Fr. Zeman’s remains, following its blessing. (ANS)

The new blessed’s relics were encased in a small, coffin-like casket designed by two Slovak artists, Andrei Botek and Marian Kralik. The façade of the casket includes two sculpted reliefs showing Fr. Zeman leading a clandestine escape party and the moment of his capture.

Blessed Titus’s memorial will be observed on January 8, his dies natalis (“heavenly birthday”).

Following his Salesian vocation

As early as age ten, Titus Zeman wanted to become a priest. He studied with the Salesians at Sastin and made his profession on August 6, 1932. He began theological at the Gregorian University in Rome and finished in Chieri. He was ordained in Turin on June 23, 1940, and returned to Slovakia, which had declared independence and allied itself with Germany during World War II. Nevertheless, he was able to exercise his Salesian ministry first at the youth center in Bratislava, then as a parish priest, and finally as a chemistry and biology teacher in Trnava.

The website set up by the Slovak Salesians to promote information about Blessed Titus. (ANS)

Reunited after the war, Czechoslovakia suffered a Communist coup in 1948 and became a Stalinist satellite. In April 1950 the government ordered that all religious be rounded up in the dead of night. Many of them were sent to concentration camps. Fr. Zeman happened to be away from the Salesian house for Easter services and so evaded the round-up. He decided to go underground to help his young confreres who weren’t in camps to escape to Turin to complete their studies. He led successful escape parties totaling more than 60 Salesians in August and October 1950. A third group’s attempt to cross the Morava River into Austria was foiled by a border guard, and most of the group, including Fr. Zeman, were captured. (Bro. Pestun was one who got away.)

Some of the Salesians whom Fr. Zeman led to freedom. (tituszeman.sk/)

A section of the Salesian Slovak webpage on Fr. Zeman called “Saved by Titus“ records the names and history of many of those whom he assisted to get away. Of interest to New Rochelle Province Salesians is that one of them was Bro. Jozef Hercog (sic).

Captured, tortured, killed slowly

Fr. Zeman faced the death penalty during his trial but in February 1952 was sentenced instead to 25 years in prison. With his health ruined by torture and harsh conditions, he was paroled to Vajnory in March 1964, and during the “Prague Spring” of 1968 was finally given permission to celebrate Mass again. He died of heart failure, however, on January 8, 1969.

The entire country took up Fr. Zeman. In April of this year a pilgrimage of 200 altar servers came to Sastin, where Blessed Titus had once been an altar boy, to celebrate “Titus, one of us.” A hymn was composed by Slovak poet Daniel Hevier in honor of the holy martyr. A biography titled Beyond the River, Toward Salvation: Titus Zeman, Martyr for Vocations, was published in both Slovak and Italian versions. Festivals and conferences were held in Bratislava, Trnava, and elsewhere, and TV and radio specials were aired. The Slovak bishops issued a pastoral letter regarding him in September. As noted above, hundreds of clergy participated in the beatification Mass, which was broadcast nationally. The Salesians organized a masterful webpage with multiple language options: www.tituszeman.sk, which includes an hour-long documentary film, I Passed the Border (with English subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HbvlZSgq4w.

Altar servers who took part in a pilgrimage to celebrate
the upcoming beatification of a former altar boy. (tituszeman.sk/)

On May 30, Fr. Jozef Slivon of the postulator’s office concelebrated Pope Francis’s Mass and then presented him with a relic of Fr. Zeman and a copy of the just-published biography. The Holy Father kissed the relic and sent his blessing to everyone involved. In his Angelus message on the day after the beatification, he said: “He joins the long line of martyrs of the 20th century.... His testimony supports us in the most difficult moments of life and helps us recognize, even in hardship, the presence of the Lord.”

Pope Francis reverences a relic of Blessed Titus given to him at the Vatican. (L’Osservatore Romano)

The witness of Blessed Titus’s life and ministry

Fr. Fernandez addressed a short letter to the entire Salesian Family to mark the beatification, highlighting Fr. Zeman as a fruit of Salesian sanctity, as a faithful Salesian totally in love with the Church and the priesthood, and as a zealous apostle of vocations.

A young Titus Zeman (2nd from right) with friends. (tituszeman.sk/)

Young Fr. Zeman greeted by girls in traditional dress

Many people who knew Fr. Titus offered their testimony about his character, dedication, and courage, even before the events that led to his martyrdom. One of his students described him as “my spiritual father.” Another calls him “simple-hearted, very funny, and a great sportsman.” He helped hide Jews during World War II and hide nuns when the Red Army advanced through Slovakia. A Salesian student of theology remarked on how he helped clean up their school after the Russians left it full of excrement and stinking like a sewer: “I saw there his great love and tenacity for his work. He was a true Salesian who did everything in a humble way. It was clear he liked us, the young students of theology, a lot. He saw us as the hope for the Salesian Congregation in Slovakia.”

Procession of clergy entering the cemetery for Fr. Zeman’s burial. (tituszeman.sk/)

Fr. Zeman’s “funeral was exceptionally touching … not only because of its outer aspects (it was a true triumph of sympathy, wonder, and gratitude) but mainly because such unity of emotion … is truly rare. There was not only a homily at the Mass but also several speeches and a funeral oration. All of the speakers emphasized the great qualities of the deceased: conscientiousness, strength of his spirit, profound faith, strong will, transcendental devotion to God’s will, but mainly absolute self-sacrifice for the priestly ideal and effort to save young priestly vocations for the Church and the Salesian Society.”

Blessed Titus’s best known saying is probably, “Even if I lose my life, I do not consider it a waste, knowing that at least one of those whom I have saved has become a priest to take my place.” At his funeral the Slovak provincial noted that more than 50 priests and religious owed their vocations to him; his life was a kernel of wheat that fell to the ground and produced abundant fruit. “If every priest who died in Slovakia left such religious posterity, the funerals of Slovak priests would mean not a decrease but an increase in the priestly ranks.”