Servant of God Kornelija Horvat

Kornelija Horvat (Koprivnica, December 22, 1886 – Hvar, January 3, 1944) was a Croatian Catholic nun, a Sister of Charity, and a victim of the Yugoslav communist regime. A beatification process has been initiated for Sister Kornelija, along with six other fellow sisters who were victims of martyrdom. She was born Armina Horvat in Koprivnica on December 22, 1886. Her parents were from Gornja Rijeka near Križevci. She entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in 1925, taking the religious name Kornelija. Her first assignment was at a kindergarten in Daruvar from 1926 to 1927. She was subsequently transferred to Jelsa on the island of Hvar in 1927, where she served as a kindergarten teacher until the end of 1943. Together with six other citizens, including the parish priest Father Jakov Račić, she was sentenced to death by the Military Court of the Command of the Central Dalmatian Island Area. For a time, she was imprisoned in the town of Hvar in a building on St. Stephen's Square, just a few dozen meters from the cathedral. Partisans frequently brought their victims there, taking them out at night to the execution site. On January 3, 1944, a partisan guard carried out her death sentence by firing squad at the Hvar cemetery. The Hvar parish priest and vicar general, Father Joško Šantić, and Marinko Jurić Peretov initiated a request for the rehabilitation of the victims in 2003. In 2014, on the 70th anniversary of her tragic death, a memorial plaque was placed on the house where she lived on Put Gospe Street in Jelsa. In Gospić, on the 72nd anniversary of the martyrdom of Sister Žarka Ivasić, the Bishop of Gospić-Senj, Zdenko Križić, solemnly opened the beatification process for the Servants of God: Sister Žarka Ivasić and six fellow martyr sisters (Sister M.