Suggest an Edit — Józef Innocenty Guz

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Biography

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Józef Guz, known in religion as Innocent (Polish: Innocenty), was a Polish Catholic priest and professed member of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual. He was born on 18 March 1890 in Lwów, then a principal city of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and today known as Lviv in Ukraine. He entered the Conventual Franciscans, received the religious name Innocent, and was ordained a priest. He lived according to the Franciscan vows and exercised priestly ministry among the Polish faithful.

After the restoration of Polish independence following the First World War, he continued his life and work as a Conventual Franciscan friar within the Polish province of the order. Surviving public sources provide only limited detail about his specific convent assignments and daily pastoral activities, which is typical for many ordinary religious of the period who left few personal writings. His vocation unfolded in a strongly Catholic society in which Franciscan communities were engaged in preaching, sacramental ministry, and the care of the faithful.

The outbreak of the Second World War and the German occupation of Poland in 1939 led to a systematic persecution of the Polish Church. Clergy and members of religious orders were arrested in large numbers. Innocent Guz was seized by the Nazi German authorities and transported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Oranienburg in Germany. Under the harsh regime of the camp he died on 6 June 1940. The Catholic Church recognizes his death as martyrdom.

Pope John Paul II beatified him on 13 June 1999 in Warsaw as one of the 108 Martyrs of World War II, a group of Polish clergy, religious, and laity killed under the German occupation. The group is commemorated liturgically on 12 June. Innocent Guz has not been canonized. He is venerated among these blessed martyrs; no extensive list of particular patronages is attached to him individually in standard hagiographical references.

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