Pavel Peter Gojdič
Pavel Peter Gojdič, OSBM (17 July 1888 — 17 July 1960), was a Rusyn Basilian monk who served as Eparch of Prešov in the Slovak Greek Catholic Church. Following the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état, he was arrested by the StB, the secret police of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, and imprisoned on charges of high treason. Despite promises of immediate release if he would agree to become patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia, Gojdič died at Leopoldov Prison as a prisoner of conscience in 1960.
Following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, Gojdič was posthumously honoured by President Václav Havel and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001. For his role in saving 1500 Jewish lives during the Holocaust in Slovakia, Gojdič was posthumously honoured as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 2007.
In the Martyrology
- July 17 Blessed Pavel Peter Gojdic, bishop of Prešov of the Slovaks, martyr of Slovakia