04/11/2005

Archbishop of Vienna Remembers Nazi Resistor

ROME, NOV. 4, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Christoph Sch�nborn paid a special tribute to the memory of Austrian Franz J�gerst�tter, 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 J�gerst�tter'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.

J�gerst�tter 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."

J�gerst�tter, a Catholic husband and father of three, was decapitated on Aug. 9, 1943.