Polish family killed by Nazis for saving Jews beatified by Catholic Church

A Polish couple and their seven children, who were killed by Nazis during Second World War for hiding Jews in order to save them, were beatified on Sunday. This marked the first time an entire family was given Catholicism's highest honours.

The ceremony took place in Markowa, the family's hometown in south-west Poland. It was led by Papal envoy Cardinal Marcello Semeraro and was attended by thousands, including the president and prime minister, bishops, priests, the country's chief rabbi and an Israeli delegation.

Pope Francis himself commended the family and prayed for them.

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"May this Polish family, who represented a ray of light in the darkness of the Second World War, be for us all a model to imitate in the impulse of goodness, in the service of those in need," Pope Francis said on Sunday.

On March 24, 1944, the German police shot dead Jozef Ulma and his wife Wiktoria, who was seven months pregnant and even partially gave birth during execution.

Their children, Stanislawa, Barbara, Wladyslav, Franciszek, Antoni and Maria, aged between two and eight, were killed too, along with the eight Jews the family had been hiding in the attic.

The eight -- Shaul Goldmann and his five children, including his daughter Lea Didner and her five-year-old daughter, and Golda Gruenfeld -- were also shot, before the family farmhouse was looted and set on fire.

Vatican News said that the police fired into the attic from below "and the blood of the victims began to drip from the ceiling... onto a photograph of two Jewish woman lying on a table below"

That photograph "has been preserved as a 'relic'", it said.

Italian journalist Manuela Tulli told AFP that the massacre followed "a story of love and friendship".

"When the Jews asked for help, they opened their doors. They lived together for a year and a half, cooking and eating together,"Tulli told AFP.

Jozef Ulma was a farmer but also a keen photographer.

The Ulma family are the first ever to be beatified, a key step on a possible path to sainthood in the Catholic Church.

And in a rare move, the Ulmas' newborn seventh child also earned the title of "blessed".

The child was eligible for beatification through the concept of "baptism of blood", having been born "at the time of the mother's martyrdom", according to the Vatican's department for saints.

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