Anton Martin Slomshek was born on 26 November 1800 in Ponikva, Slovenia is the first Slovenian to be beatified. He was known as a great educator and he was only responsible for the nearly 100% literacy rate among Slovenians in the 19th century.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Slovenian education system had been crippled by the Austrian empire’s suppression of their native language and culture. This left them without their own schools, texts and magazines, and newspapers.
As bishop, Anton Martin Slomshek reformed the schools in Slovenia and rebuilt the education system. He wrote many textbooks, began a weekly review and wrote many books and essays concerning whatever questions he considered relevant to the intellectual needs of his people.
He founded a society for the spread of Catholic literature, an organization responsible in large part for making possible the rejuvenation of the Catholic cultural base of the Slovenian nation.
He was known as a simple and humble man, possessed with a childlike purity, and was loved by his priests and his flock.
Blessed Anton died September 24, 1862, in Maribor, Slovenia, and was beatified on September 19, 1999, by Pope John Paul II.