On 28 April 2006 Benedict XVI signed the document that recognises the martyrdom of the Hungarian Sára Salkaházi and opens the way for her beatification in the near future. Sára Salkaházi dedicated her life to the service of the weak. She was killed by Hungarian Nazis on 27 December 1944, while she was giving secret refuge to a hundred or so Jews. Benedict XVI has authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate, among others, the Decree regarding “the martyrdom of the Servant of God Sára Salkaházi, of the Institute of the Sisters of Assistance, who was born at Kassa (Koice, in what is now Slovakia) on 11 May 1899 and who died in Budapest (Hungary) in December 1944”. Her process of beatification had been introduced in 1997. “I think that in the year of the nation’s spiritual renewal – commented Cardinal Péter Erdo, Primate of Hungary, in a statement to the Hungarian Catholic press agency Magyar Kurìr – the Holy Father could not have made a finer gift to the Hungarian Church nor to Hungarian society as a whole”.
