Pope Francis on Saturday declared as martyrs a Polish couple who were executed by German police during World War II for hiding Jews in their farmhouse.

The Vatican said in a statement that the "martyrdom of the servants of God" Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma and their children should be recognized.

Who were Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma?

The Catholic family lived in Markowa in southeastern Poland during World War II.

The couple hid several people, including a Jewish family of six and two Jewish sisters, who were being hunted down by the Nazis during the German occupation of Poland in 1942.

The Ulmas were later betrayed by the occupying forces, who shot the Jews and later killed the pair and their six young children.

Wiktoria was pregnant with their seventh child at the time of her murder.

According to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, the couple were forced to witness the execution of the Jewish people who were seized from their homes.

Yearslong campaign for beatification

According to the Vatican, the pope learned about the Ulma family when he visited Poland during a 2016 pilgrimage.

During a general audience in November 2018, Francis hailed their efforts as "an example of faithfulness to God and his commandments, of love for neighbor and of respect for human dignity."

The decision to declare the pair as martyrs followed a meeting with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the head of the Vatican authority responsible for the beatification processes.

Recognition of their martyrdom would permit the couple to be beatified, the last formal step before possible sainthood.

After beatification, a miracle attributed to their intercession would be necessary for eventual canonization, as the Catholic church's sainthood process is called.

Nazis built death camps in Poland

Poland was the first country invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II and was where the Nazis built their major death camps.

Members of Poland's resistance and government-in-exile warned the world about the Nazis' mass killing of Jewish people.

Thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews, even though other Poles murdered or victimized their Jewish compatriots.

Nearly all of Poland's roughly three million Jews were killed by the Germans and their collaborators during the Holocaust.

Mother Teresa Prize awarded to trio

Pope Francis also marked his 86th birthday on Saturday by handing out the Mother Teresa Prize to three people in recognition of their different forms of charity. 

The recipients included Franciscan priest Hanna Jallouf, a Syrian who works in his country, Italian industrialist Silvano Pedrollo for his work in building schools and bringing clean drinking water to the poor in developing countries, and a homeless man identified by his street name Wue.

mm/ar (AP, dpa, Reuters)