Pavol Peter Gojdič

Pavel Peter Gojdič, OSBM (also Pavol; 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. 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.

Early life Gojdič was born on 17 July 1888 at Ruské Pekľany (today part of Ľubovec in Slovakia), the third child of the Byzantine Catholic priest Stefan Gojdič; his mother's name was Anna Gerberyova. He received the name of Peter in baptism. He was also entrusted with the spiritual care of the faithful in Sabinov as assistant parish priest. Gojdič was appointed to the Bishop's Chancery Office, where eventually he achieved the rank of Chancellor. A career as a diocesan administrator did not attract him, so he decided to become a Basilian monk. On 20 July 1922 Gojdič entered St. Nicholas Monastery on Chernecha Hora, near Mukachevo, where taking the habit on 27 January 1923, he took the name Pavel.

Bishop In 1940 the pope appointed him Bishop of Prešov, and for the year 1939 apostolic administrator of Mukacheve. From the beginning of their persecution in Slovakia, Gojdič spoke up openly in defence of the Jewish population. On 25 January 1939, two days after the establishment of a special committee by the Slovak autonomist government charged with defining the "Program for the Solution of the Jewish Question," the bishop wrote a letter addressed to all parishes in his Prešov diocese; in the letter, he predicted disastrous results caused by these discriminatory policies. After the Slovak parliament confirmed a special law permitting the expulsion of Jews from Slovakia, Gojdič wrote a protest against the cruel deportations which were being carried out by the Collaborationist Hlinka Party. On 31 March 1942, Gojdič suggested to Vatican diplomat Giuseppe Burzio that Collaborationist Slovak President Fr. Jozef Tiso ought to be ordered to resign, and if he refused, be excommunicated and laicized over his complicity in the Holocaust in Slovakia.

During the war, the Bishop helped refugees and prisoners, and rescued inmates of concentration camps. On 26 October 1942, the Slovak Hlinka Guard informed the Ministry of the Interior that high number of fictitious conversions to Byzantine Catholicism were taking place. The report pointed out several cases where only one member of a Jewish family converted to Christianity in order to protect all the other members. Out of 249 Jewish families, 533 Jews had converted to the Greek Catholic or Russian Orthodox faith in order to rescue some 1500 other members of their families, who had not converted; moreover, most of those who had "converted" continued to actively practice Judaism either in the open or undercover. According to the security service report, Bishop Gojdič had personally held a fictitious conversion ceremony to save Jewish lives in the town of Michalovce. and with the Cross of Pribina – First Class.

On 4 November 2001, Bishop Gojdič was beatified by Pope John Paul II, who during his visit in Slovakia, while visiting Prešov, prayed before his tomb in the chapel of the cathedral.

He was honored in Bratislava by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in 2007 as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.