Beatification

An Italian Consolata sister murdered in Somalia in 2006 will be beatified in Piacenza, Italy, May 26.

Tom Rother is a brother to the first U.S.-born martyr, Father Stanley Rother, who will be beatified Sept. 23 in Oklahoma City. He was gunned down in 1981 in the Guatemalan village where he ministered.

On Sept. 23, Oklahomans will get a front row seat to the beatification of Father Stanley Rother, an ordinary man from an ordinary town, who died extraordinarily as a martyr in Guatemala while serving in a mission.

The remains of Father Solanus Casey were exhumed Aug. 1 as part of the canonical process that precedes the saintly Capuchin Franciscan friar’s beatification Mass in November.

The document went into effect the same day of its publication July 11, with the title “Maiorem hac dilectionem,” which comes from the Gospel according to St. John (15:13): “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Pope Francis will beatify a priest and a bishop martyred in Colombia when he visits the country in September 8.

A documentary titled “The Shepherd Cannot Run: Father Rother’s Story,” about U.S. priest who worked in Guatemala for 14 years until he was brutally murdered in 1981 will be shown prior to his beatified in September.

The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City has opened a website detailing the life, as well as steps toward sainthood, of Father Stanley Rother, an Oklahoma priest scheduled to be beatified in the fall.