Blessed Anna Kolesárová
Also known as
Anka Kolesárová
Profile
Daughter of Ján "Hruska" Kolesár and Anna (née Kusnírová), she was born into a pious farming family and baptized at the age of one day. Anna's mother died when the girl was ten years old, and she did her best to run the household for her father and brother, Michal. When Russian soldiers were liberating her area of Slovakia from Nazi occupation near the end of World War II, local families hid from them due to their rough, violent reputation, and to avoid the combat that went on around their villages. On 22 November 1944, Anna was discovered by a drunken Red Army soldier who made her cook for him, and then demanded sex. She refused and ran to her father and brother, but was gunned down by the soldier. Martyr.
Born
14 July 1928 in Vysoká nad Uhom, diocese of Kosice, Czechoslovakia (in the modern Slovak Republic)
Died
• shot in the chest and the face with a rifle on 22 November 1944 in Pavlovce nad Uhom, Kosice, Slovak Republic
• buried in a shallow grave on the evening of the next day by her family who still had to spend most of their time in hiding due the combat around them
• re-buried and given proper funeral rites by Father Anton Lukác on 29 November 1944; he immediately begin conducting his own preliminary investigation into her Cause for Canonization
• during the period of Communist Czechoslovakia, mention of the incident and gatherings at her grave were prohibited
• since the fall of the Communist government, her grave has become a pilgrimage site for young people including the Catholic youth organization Domcek which is dedicated to her memory
Beatified
1 September 2018 by Pope Francis
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