Below is an article published by The Boston Pilot

The Oct. 30 beatification of a martyred bishop will be an "important reminder" of the church's communist-era persecution and serve to boost the country's Christian faith, the head of Romania's Catholic Church said.

"We've tried to draw the attention of all Romanians to this great event, which will be marked by the ringing of church bells nationwide," said Archbishop Ioan Robu of Bucharest in advance of the beatification of Bishop Szilard Bogdanffy, the ethnic Hungarian prelate who died after being tortured in a communist-run Romanian prison.

"We must hope the new generations can understand what happened to the church at the time, and what we're celebrating today," he said. "Although it all happened in a very different era, today's young people need links with those who lived before, to see and recognize the witness we share with them."

The beatification of Bishop Bogdanffy was set for the northern city of Oradea, 47 years after the prelate's death at age 42.

In a Catholic News Service interview, Archbishop Robu said the honoring of a Latin-rite bishop from Romania's Hungarian minority would focus attention on the fate of Christians from various ethnic and religious backgrounds.

"The idea being faithful to the point of martyrdom is something understandable to everyone which goes beyond matters of identity and belonging," Archbishop Robu said.

"Although this beatification will draw attention to one part of the church, the church itself is always one. Work is still under way two decades after the collapse of communist rule on acts of martyrdom. But it's important we can now begin to recognize what the martyrs did for the faith," he said.

Christians were persecuted in Romania under communist rule, which lasted from the end of World War II until the December 1989 "Winter Revolution."

In 2003, commissions from the country's churches drew up a ''National Christian Martyrology," a listing of people killed for their faith-based actions. The list includes 340 Christians including 50 Latin-rite Catholics.

Bishop Bogdanffy was born in Crna Bara, now in Serbia, to an ethnic Hungarian village teacher's family. He attended a Piarist order high school in Timisoara, and later studied theology in Oradea and Budapest, Hungary.

He was ordained a priest in June 1934 in Oradea and worked as a tutor at the seminary in nearby Satu Mare as well as spiritual director of St Joseph Institute and Ursuline Pedagogical Institute.

From 1936 to 1943, he served on the faculty of the Peter Pazmany Catholic University in Budapest, where he also earned a doctorate degree. He later returned to Oradea to reorganize Catholic secondary education after World War II.

In 1948, when Romania's Catholic seminaries were nationalized, he set up a secret training course for clergy and was the contact between the dioceses or Oradea and Satu Mare and the Vatican nunciature in Bucharest.

Secretly consecrated a bishop in February 1949, he was arrested two months later by the Romanian secret police, and tortured in the notorious Jilava, Capul Midia and Sighetul Marmatiei prisons.

In April 1953, Bishop Bogdanffy was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor on espionage and subversion charges in a show-trial. Although his family and lawyers obtained an annulment and a retrial was ordered, the bishop died from mistreatment at Aiud prison Oct. 2, 1953, before it could take place.

Archbishop Robu told CNS he hoped the beatification ceremony would "provide an impetus" for other sainthood causes, including those of the martyred Bishop Anton Durcovici, 63, who died in 1951, and Father Vladimir Ghika, 80, who perished in 1954 in Jilava prison after penning 850 reflections from his cell.

"Each process is different and runs according to diocesan rules, but we can be sure Bishop Szilard Bogdanffy is only the first to be declared blessed," the archbishop said.