Hermann Stępień

Hermann Stępień (21 October 1910 – 19 July 1943) was a Polish Roman Catholic martyr.

Early life
Karol Stępień was born into a poor family on 21 October 1910, in Łódź, Poland.

Stępień was educated in Łódź. He attended the Franciscan seminary in Lviv, graduating in 1929. He then attended the Pontifical University of St. Bonaventure in Rome. He was ordained as a Franciscan priest in 1937 in Rome, taking the religious name "Hermann". Stępień returned to Poland, where he earned a Master's degree in Theology from Lviv University.

Vocation
Stępień served as a Francisco priest in Radomsko and Vilnius. In 1940, he was asked by Bishop Kazimierz Bukraba of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pinsk to go to Piaršai to help their parish priest, Achille Puchala.

When the Nazis invaded in 1943, Stępień decided to stay and keep preaching. He declared: "Pastors cannot leave the believers!"

Death
On 19 July 1943, the Nazis took Stępień, Puchala and their parishioners to a barn in Borowikowszczyzna (today Borovikovshchina in Valozhyn District, Belarus), which they set on fire, thus murdering them all together.

Legacy
Stępień was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 13 June 1999, in Warsaw, Poland.