The Vatican on Tuesday set a date for the beatification of a wartime priest who died at the hands of Yugoslav Communist guerillas in the so-called Foibe atrocities.
Francesco Giovanni Bonifacio was among thousands of Italians whose bodies were thrown into rock pits called 'foibe' along the Istrian peninsula in modern-day Slovenia and Croatia at the end of World War Two.
Bonifacio was working as a priest in an area of modern-day Croatia when he was taken off into the woods by two soldiers in 1946 never to be seen again.
One of the soldiers later said the 34-year-old priest was beaten, stripped and stabbed before being thrown into the foibe. His body was never found.
The beatification of Bonifacio - the penultimate stage before sainthood - will take place in Trieste on October 4, the Vatican's liturgical celebrations office said.
Vatican officials would then need to recognise a miracle attributed to Bonifacio's heavenly intercession before he could be made a saint.
The Foibe atrocities are a highly divisive issue in contemporary Italian politics, with right-wing politicians accusing the Left of trying to airbrush the massacres out of history and focusing exclusively on the crimes committed by the Fascist regime.
Up to 5,000 Italians were thrown into the gorges dead and alive at the end of the war when the area was occupied by Communist forces led by Yugoslav strongman, Marshal Josef Tito.
Thousands more Italians are believed to have been killed by Tito's troops in Istria, Dalmatia and the surrounding provinces.
The liturgical celebrations office also fixed a date for the beatification of the parents of St Therese of Lisieux, patron saint of France alongside Joan of Arc.
Louis Martin and Zelie Marie Guerin will be beatified on October 19 in their daughter's home town of Lisieux, where Therese died in 1897.
