Bl. Miroslav Bulešić

Miroslav Bulešić was born in 1920 in a village in Istria, the peninsula now shared by Croatia and Slovenia. He studied in Koper, Gorizia and Rome and was ordained in 1943, in the middle of the war. He served in several Istrian parishes and taught at the seminary in Pazin.

After the war Istria came under Yugoslavia's Communist government, which was hostile to the Church. On August 24, 1947, he was helping a bishop's representative give the sacrament of Confirmation in the village of Lanišće. A mob stirred up by the authorities broke into the parish house and Father Bulešić was killed. He was twenty-seven. He was beatified in the Roman arena of Pula in 2013.

Miroslav Bulešić was beatified in 2013.

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