Harrisburg Diocese investigating miracle attributed to Dachau priest

Published: 2004-09-02

HARRISBURG, Pa. (CNS) -- Nearly six decades after Mariannhill Father Engelmar Unzeitig died in a Nazi concentration camp, the Harrisburg Diocese is investigating an alleged miracle that could move him closer to eventual canonization. Although the name of the person who experienced the alleged miracle has not been revealed, the claimant lives in the Harrisburg Diocese and became acquainted with Father Unzeitig's story while helping to liberate the concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, in the spring of 1945. A native of the present-day Czech Republic, the priest was imprisoned by the Nazi regime in 1941 for preaching the Gospel and teaching Catholic doctrine in Austria. He spent four of his five years as a priest tending to the spiritual, emotional and physical needs of those imprisoned with him. When a typhoid epidemic plagued the Dachau camp in February 1945, Father Unzeitig volunteered to serve in the infirmary -- knowing that he too would die from the epidemic -- so that other prisoners might live and possibly be reunited with their families. The priest died less than two months before the prisoners were freed. The Harrisburg diocesan tribunal officially began an investigation of the alleged miracle attributed to Father Unzeitig Aug. 20. The claimant says he was cured of cancer in the mid-1990s after praying for the priest's intercession.

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