Suggest an Edit — László 7th Prince Batthyány-Strattmann

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László Batthyány-Strattmann was born on 28 October 1870 at Dunakiliti in the Kingdom of Hungary, then part of Austria-Hungary, as Count László Batthyány de Németújvár, the sixth of ten children of Count József Batthyány and Countess Ludovika. He received a Catholic education at Jesuit secondary schools in Kalksburg near Vienna and later at Kalocsa. After first studying agriculture in Vienna he turned to medicine, taking his medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1900 and going on to specialize in surgery and ophthalmology. In 1898 he married Countess Maria Theresia Coreth zu Coredo und Starkenberg; the marriage produced thirteen children.

After qualifying he opened a private hospital in 1902 at Kittsee (Köpcsény) on his estates, treating patients without regard to their ability to pay and becoming widely known as the doctor of the poor. He devoted particular skill to diseases of the eye and performed thousands of operations, many of them for cataract. In 1915, on the death of his childless cousin Prince Ödön Batthyány-Strattmann, he inherited the princely title and the principal family properties, becoming the seventh Prince Batthyány-Strattmann. He later transferred his hospital to the family castle at Körmend in Hungary and continued to treat the poor without charge.

A devout Catholic and a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis, he combined the duties of a great landowner with an intense life of prayer and unpaid medical charity. In the late 1920s he developed cancer of the bladder. He endured a long and painful illness with notable patience and died in Vienna on 22 January 1931. He was buried in the Batthyány family crypt at the Franciscan monastery in Güssing (Németújvár), in what is now Burgenland, Austria.

His reputation for holiness and for selfless service to the sick led to the opening of a cause for beatification. Pope John Paul II beatified him in Rome on 23 March 2003. His liturgical memorial is kept on 22 January. He is remembered in Hungary and Austria as a model of the Christian physician and of lay holiness lived in marriage and family life.

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