Blessed Liberat Weiß

Johannes Laurentius Weiss (religious name Liberat) and his two companions Michele Pio Fasoli and Antonio Francesco Marzorati (religious name Samuele) were German and Italian priests of the Order of Friars Minor. All of them were missionaries. In 1704 they set off from Rome for Cairo to begin their travel through the Nile River to reach Ethiopia. But the team experienced significant pitfalls: conflicts in Ethiopia slowed them down and forced their return to Cairo though the team succeeded in their second attempt to reach their destination. Finally, anti-Catholicism was being fomented there under Miaphysite Orthodox Emperor of Ethiopia Dawit III, who decreed the missionaries, who accepted the Council of Chalcedon, to be nothing more than heretics, which resulted in the three friars being stoned. The beatification process for the three slain friars launched in 1932 over two centuries following their deaths; the trio were beatified in Rome on 20 November 1988 upon confirmation that the trio died "in odium fidei" (in hatred of the faith). Johannes Laurentius Weiss was born in Konnersreuth in Bavaria in 1675 as the second of six children. He was educated in a Cistercian convent in the Upper Palatinate. He entered the Order of Friars Minor at their convent in Graz in Austria on 13 October 1693 and upon his admittance into the order he assumed the name "Liberat". He received his sacerdotal ordination to the priesthood in Vienna on 14 September 1699 from the Cardinal Archbishop of Esztergom Leopold Karl von Kollonitsch. Following his ordination he worked in Langenlois and then in Graz. In 1703 he offered himself to go to the missions but had to undergo training first in order to fulfil this request. Propaganda Fide in Rome named him as such on 4 April 1704 after he underwent a training course for five months in Rome and departed on 1 January 1705 for Cairo to join the group that would go to Ethiopia.