In the town of Kosice in Slovakia, about 30,000 Catholic believers participated in the beatification ceremony (counting blessed persons) of Anna Kolesarova, a Slovak girl who was killed during the Second World War by a Soviet soldier for refusing to enter into intimate relations with him.

The representative of the Vatican Giovanni Angelo Beccia called Kolesarova "a martyr who gave his life to Christ in order to preserve purity".

16-year-old Anna Kolesarova was killed in the city of Vysoka nad Ugom in eastern Slovakia in November 1944. A soldier of the Red Army, whose name remained unknown, is said to have shot a girl in front of her relatives. Kolesarova's story gained fame in her native land, and her grave became a place of pilgrimage for Catholic youth.

Speaking at the ceremony of beatification, church representatives noted that the history of Anna Kolesarova makes us think about the humiliation often experienced by young women in the modern world. At the same time, in connection with the beatification of Kolesarova against the Catholic Church, criticism is also heard - she is accused of improper treatment of the victims of rape, in the formulation of the wrong moral choice, as critics claim, between preserving life and chastity.

Source: Radio Liberty.