Career
He became a bishop only at the end of his life. In the summer of 1944 he wrote to the Hungarian Primate Jusztinian Serédi to persuade him to take a strong stance against the government. He also appealed to Gestapo headquarters in Berlin in an attempt to free the Jews of Győr from the ghetto and negotiated with the Nazi military command to spare the town from a siege.
When Red Army troops wanted to storm his residence he was shot trying to protect the women from rape.
He died from his injuries but the women were saved. Today, there stands a statue in District XII of Budapest in Hungary in his honour and the place itself has been named Apor Vilmos tér according to the Hungarian standard of name order.
He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1997.