Carl Lampert, the highest representative of Austria's Catholic Church to be killed for opposing the Nazis, was officially beatified on Sunday, exactly 67 years after his death.
Cardinal Angelo Amato, who oversees the Vatican's canonisation process, read out a papal decree elevating Lampert just one step below sainthood before some 1,700 people, including from Poland and Germany, in the western town of Dornbirn.
A minute of silence was also held at 4:00 pm (1500 GMT), the time of Lampert's execution on November 13, 1944.
Lampert, the former vicar general of Innsbruck, was sentenced to death three times for opposing the Nazi regime and finally executed by guillotine at a prison in Halle an der Saale in eastern Germany in 1944. He was accused of high treason, espionage, undermining army morale and aiding the enemy.
According to the papal decree read out by Cardinal Amato, he "accepted persecution and death because he saw himself as a fearless servant of the gospel of Jesus Christ and defended the Church".
At mass in Rome on Sunday, Pope Benedikt XVI also acknowledged "the martyred priest Carl Lampert", who "in the dark days of national socialism", refused to give in to the new regime and stood by the Church.
Lampert lobbied for imprisoned priests and ministers and defended the Church against Nazi attacks after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Arrested repeatedly by the secret Gestapo police, he spent several months in the concentration camps of Dachau and Sachsenhausen.
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