Bl. Liborius Wagner

Liborius Wagner was born in 1593 at Mühlhausen in Thuringia, Germany, and grew up Protestant. He studied in Leipzig, Gotha and Strasbourg. In 1621 he went to Würzburg to study under the Jesuits, became a Catholic and was ordained a priest in 1625.

From 1626 he was parish priest of Altenmünster, a mostly Protestant town, where he served Catholics and Protestants alike. In 1631, during the Thirty Years' War, Swedish troops arrived and he went into hiding nearby.

He was betrayed and captured on December 4, 1631. For five days at Mainberg castle he was tortured and offered his freedom if he would give up his faith. He answered each time, "I live, suffer and die a Catholic." He was killed on December 9, 1631, and was beatified in 1974.

Liborius Wagner was beatified in 1974.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.