Archbishop of Vienna Remembers Nazi ResistorROME, NOV. 4, 2005 (
Zenit.org).- Cardinal Christoph Schönborn paid a special tribute to the memory of Austrian Franz Jägerstätter, a Catholic executed
for his opposition to Hitler and Nazism.
The archbishop of Vienna, accompanied by other Austrian prelates on their
five-yearly visit to Rome, presided at a prayer meeting today in St. Bartholomew's Basilica on Tiberina Island, dedicated
to 20th-century witnesses of the faith.
During the ceremony, organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio, one of Jägerstätter's
manuscripts, written in a prison near Berlin before his execution, was presented.
The test will remain in the basilica
as a testimony of his witness.
Jägerstätter wrote: "I am writing with bound hands; but it is better than if my will
had been enchained. Sometimes God reveals his strength openly to us; strength he grants to those who love him and do not put
earth before heaven.
"Not prison, not chains, not even death can part a man from the love of God, or rob him of his
free will. The power of God is invincible."
Jägerstätter, a Catholic husband and father of three, was decapitated
on Aug. 9, 1943.
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