The joy of "seeing a lay man, married, with children, added today to the list of blessed souls". This is the beginning of the message read today in Linz by card. José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation of the Causes of the Saints, whom Pope Benedict XVI wanted to officiate the solemn rite of the beatification of the servant of God Franz Jägerstätter in the Austrian city. The cardinal quoted a writing by Giorgio La Pira: "holiness in our century will be like this: it will be the holiness of the lay". "The Blessed Franz went on the prefect was a man of our time, an ordinary man, with his faults and even, for some time in his life, a rather frivolous and mundane lifestyle. But, following his calling and with God’s grace, he managed to put God’s will above anything else and, after a time-consuming inner fight, he managed to achieve an extraordinary life of Christian testimony. For his faith and beliefs, he faced death". Born in 1907 from a family of peasants, in 1940 he became a Franciscan tertiary; called to arms in 1943, when the world war was in full swing, he declared that as a Christian he could not serve Hitler’s ideology and fight an unjust war, and for this he was guillotined on 9th August that year. (continued)” “
