Placido Cortese

Nicolò Cortese (7 March 1907 – 3 November 1944) - in religious Placido - was an Italian Catholic priest and professed member from the Order of Friars Minor Conventual. He served as both a parish priest and as the director for the "Il Messaggero di Sant'Antonio" magazine in Padua before and during World War II. It was in that conflict that he set up an elaborate network designed to protect Jewish people as well as British prisoners of war and Yugoslavs. But the Nazis soon discovered his plans and organized his arrest in October 1944 before killing him some weeks later after brutal tortures in their interrogations.

Life Nicolò Cortese was born on 7 March 1907 in Cres (a town on the island with the same name) to Matteo Cortese and Antonia Battaia; he was baptized in the local parish sometime that month as Nicolò Matteo.

The current postulator for this cause is the Conventual Franciscan friar Damian-Gheorghe Pătraşcu.