Magdi, the Factory Worker Who Will Be Beatified

Mária Magdolna Bódi wanted to become a nun, but she was not allowed to because her parents were unmarried. Her father was a poor, tough, drunken atheist—and if that had been the only issue, it might have been overlooked. However, his origins were unknown, and the missing official documents was an insurmountable obstacle for him to marry. So when Mária Magdolna—Magdi—was born on August 8, 1921, in Szigliget, a small town in Hungary’s Veszprém County (now home to 935 residents), she was officially registered as an illegitimate child. She was baptized, received her First Communion and Confirmation, but convent life was denied to her—the religious rules of the time were strict. Yet her faith was profound, so she found her own way. At the age of twenty, during a spiritual retreat, she made a private vow of perpetual chastity, thus consecrating herself to Christ the King.

Magdi joined a large chemical factory that employed thousands of workers, and which was considered at the time to be cutting-edge in terms of social policies. She soon after involved herself in the Association of Working Girls, and became a point of reference for her colleagues.  In 1943, she took a nursing course in the hope of being sent to the front to provide first aid; however, the draft notice never came. She was surprised—but the truth was that the factory owners refused to give up one of their best workers.  Mária Magdolna Bódi was not yet 24 years old when she died—killed in cold blood, a victim of male violence, for resisting rape by an enemy soldier.

Those were terrible years. In 1944, the Red Army began advancing into Hungarian territory—a Country that had long sided with the Axis Powers during World War II. The tragedy unfolded on March 23, 1945, when Soviet troops arrived in the small village of Litér, where Magdi’s family had moved for work.

The young factory worker was standing in the courtyard of a manor house, along with several women and their children, when two armed Soviet soldiers arrived on motorcycles. One of them ordered her to enter the shelter. She knew what awaited her. She fought back, and struck the soldier in the eye with a pair of scissors, then tried to escape, and warned the other women of the danger as she did so. However, just moments later, the soldier reappeared in the courtyard and shot her on the spot. Six bullets pierced her body.  Witnesses say that she died saying, “Lord, my King! Take me with You!”

József Mindszenty, then Bishop of Veszprém, later Cardinal Primate of Hungary initiated the canonization process for Mária Magdolna Bódi in 1945. After the war, he was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to life imprisonment by the communist regime. The cause was later resumed in 1990 when Bishop József Szendi reopened the case.  On May 23, 2024, Pope Francis officially recognized her martyrdom. Her beatification will take place in Veszprém on April 26.