In the first century, Saints Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist (June 24, August 29).
In 1707, at Constantinople, Blessed Gomidas Keumurgian. During the late 17th century in Constantinople there was a movement favoring reunion with Rome. A backlash against this movement led to persecution, and Blessed Gomidas was arrested, tried and beheaded. He was an Armenian priest, known for his eloquence and devotion. He converted to Catholicism when he was forty, and many Armenians in Constantinople, moved by his martyrdom, did the same.
In 1943, at Hof, Bavaria, Blessed Bernard Lichtenberg. As a parish priest in Berlin, he supported a pacifist Catholic group in 1931 and consistently opposed the Nazi mistreatment of the Jews from the outset. He was arrested several times, and died as the Gestapo were transporting him to Dachau.
Our daily martyrology was written by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB. Copyright © 2008 by the Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID 83338.
