Franciscan monks’ remains exhumed ahead of beatification

Anthropologists and theologians are exhuming the remains of more than a dozen Franciscan monks who were killed in the early 17th century. The international group of monks are to be beatified 401 years after their deaths for their role in defending Catholicism in Protestant Prague. Experts will be studying the condition of their remains before removing specimens to be deposited in reliquaries in St. Vitus Cathedral and the Church of Our Lady of the Snows. The 14 men were killed by mercenaries of the Archduke of Austria, Leopold V, in 1611. The beatification ceremony, which has been in preparation for more than 300 years, should take place on October 13 in St. Vitus Cathedral.