Beatification cause for 14-year-old killed like St Maria Goretti

Oct 27, 2023

The Catholic Church in Nigeria has begun the process for the beatification and canonisation of 14-year-old Vivian Uchechi Ogu of Umuelem, Eniogu (pic), who was shot dead November 15, 2009, by gunmen for resisting an attempted rape.

If the cause, initiated Oct 14 is carried out, Vivian would become the Catholic Church’s second blessed in Nigeria after Blessed Cyprian Iwene Tansi who was beatified by Pope John Paul II on March 22, 1998.

Like St Maria Goretti, the young Italian woman killed for resisting violence, Vivian resisted attempts by a gang of robbers to rape her and her older sister after they were robbed and kidnapped.

Indeed, Vivian had taken St Maria Goretti as her role model in the Catechism class she last attended after Mass on Sunday, the day she was killed. Vivian had urged her fellow classmates to emulate St Maria Goretti and to never succumb to rape or any form of immorality.

But that evening, a gang of three robbers managed to enter the young woman’s family home. After restraining the people present, including her father who was injured, the thugs fled, taking Vivian and her older sister with them. Led into a nearby bush, the kidnappers attempted to abuse the two girls but Vivian resisted to the point that the thugs killed her.

“Since her reputation for martyrdom and holiness has been growing since her death, and after having been formally invited to open the Cause of Beatification and Canonisation of the Servant of God, bringing it to the attention of the Church community, we invite all the faithful who can give a valid testimony to come forward and contact the Archdiocesan Curia with their information, whether favourable or contrary to the reputation of martyrdom and holiness of the said Servant of God,” reads the decree presented by Archbishop Augustin Obiora Akubeze, Archbishop of Benin City.

Vivian was president of the Pontifical Society of Holy Childhood, and at the age of nine, raised funds to pay for the care of several destitute children in the central hospital in Benin City. She organised several visits to orphanages where she touched the lives of many poor orphans. — Fides