Vasil’ Hopko, Greco-Catholic auxiliary bishop of Presov and titular of Midilen, was born at Hrabské, in the province of Bardejov, in 1904. He was ordained as a priest at Presov in 1929 and consecrated bishop in 1947. Following the events of the Sobor (Council) of Presov in 1950, the State banned the Greco-Catholic Church. Bishop Hopko was arrested. During his detention, which lasted over 13 years, he had to endure a harsh regime characterised by physical duress, moral suffering, a starvation diet, lack of heating and insufficient medical attention. He died in Presov in 1976. Zdenka Cecilia Schelingová was born in Krivá na Orave in 1916. At the early age of fifteen she entered the convent and after completing nursing school and her novitiate, took her first vows in 1937, with the name of Sister Zdenka. She began her apostolate as a nurse and, at the height of the persecution against the Church (1952), aided and abetted the escape of a detained Catholic priest, who was receiving treatment in the state hospital for the tortures to which he had been subjected during his interrogations. She was arrested and after the terrifying ill-treatment to which she was subjected during the interrogations, sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. In 1955, her health by now broken, she was released following an amnesty. But she had less than a year to live. She died at the age of 38 in 1955.
