VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Blessed Iuliu Hossu, the Romanian Greek Catholic bishop of Cluj-Gherla, was named a cardinal “in pectore” — secretly — by St. Paul VI in 1969.

But the bishop was in a communist prison in Romania and never received his red hat.

Pope Leo XIV, along with representatives of the Romanian church and the country’s Jewish community, paid tribute to the martyred bishop June 2 during an evening ceremony in the Sistine Chapel.

The bishop was arrested, imprisoned and denied his freedom for decades because he refused to join the Orthodox Church after the Greek Catholic Church was outlawed by the communist government.

But the ceremony in the Sistine Chapel also honored the bishop for what Pope Leo described as “his courage and heroism before the communist takeover of Romania,” w

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