BLESSED PAVEL PETER GOJDIC was a Rusyn-Slovak Basilian monk and the bishop of the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Prešov. He was martyred by the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001 and recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 2007.
Pavel Gojdic (pronunciation Goydich) was born In 1888 at Ruske Peklany near Presov, the third child of the Byzantine Catholic priest Stefan Gojdic and his wife Anna Gerberyova. He received the name of Peter in baptism.
Peter began his study of theology at Presov and continued them a year later at the major seminary in Budapest. He and his brother Cornelius were ordained on August 27, 1911, after which Father Peter worked for a brief period as assistant parish priest with his father.
In the fall of 1912, after a short period of pastoral work, he was appointed prefect of the Eparchial Boarding School
Appointed Director of the Apostleship of Prayer, he became instrumental in spreading the practice of frequent confession and Holy Communion throughout the Eparchy of Mukachevo. He usually spent long hours, mostly at night, in the chapel before the tabernacle. In 1927 he was appointed titular Bishop of Harpasa and was consecrated on 25 March in the Roman Basilica of San Clemente.
After his episcopal ordination he visited the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, where he prayed on the tomb of the Apostle. On March 29, 1927, together with Bishop Njaradi, he was received in a private audience by Pope Pius XI. The pope gave Bishop Pavol a gold pectoral cross, saying: "This cross is only a symbol of all those heavy crosses that you will have to carry during your episcopal ministry.“
Bishop Pavel had been named Apostolic Administrator of the Eparchy of Presov on September 14, 1926. His first official act of office was to address a pastoral letter on the occasion of the 1100th anniversary of the birth of St. Cyril, apostle of the Slavs. Bishop Pavel was proud of his Slavic heritage and was very fond of his oriental rite.
In 1940 the Pope appointed him Bishop of Presov, and for the year 1939 Apostolic Administrator of Mukacheve.
During the period before World War II, he decided to defend the Ruthenians (Belarusians, Russians, Ukrainians and Rusyns).
During the war the bishop helped refugees and prisoners, and rescued the inmates of concentration camps. On October 26, 1942, Slovak security services informed the Ministry of the Interior of a high number of fictitious conversions taking place. The report pointed out several cases where only one member of a Jewish family converted to Christianity in order to protect all the other members. Out of 249 Jewish families, 533 Jews had converted to the Greek Catholic or Russian Orthodox faith in order to rescue some 1500 other members of their families, who had not converted; moreover, most of those who had converted continued to actively practice Judaism either in the open or undercover.
On 28 April 1950, the Communist state outlawed the Greek Catholic Church and Bishop Pavel was arrested and interned. Jewish witnesses wrote a letter in his defense to the then-Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia
At the prison of Ruzyň an official informed him that from there he could go straight to Prešov, on condition that he was willing to become patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia. He rejected the offer as an infidelity to the Pope and the faithful, and remained in prison.
He died of terminal cancer in the prison hospital of Leopoldov Prison in 1960, on his 72nd birthday. He was buried in an anonymous grave, n. 681, in the cemetery.
Blessed Pavel once said:: "For me, it is not important if I die in the Bishop's Palace or in prison; what matters is entering into Paradise ".
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