Blessed Marcel Callo

Blessed Marcel Callo was a young French worker, a scout, and an active member of the Young Christian Workers (JOC). Sent to forced labor in Germany, he carried on an apostolate among his companions, for which he was arrested. He died in the Mauthausen concentration camp at the age of twenty-three. The Church venerates him as a martyr and commemorates him on March 19.

He was born on December 6, 1921, in Rennes in Brittany, into a modest, deeply believing family, one of nine children. The next day he was baptized in the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Bonne Nouvelle, his parish church. In June 1934 he made his scout promise, and in the fall he began his apprenticeship as a typesetter in a printing house. His older brother Jean became a priest.

In 1935 he joined the JOC, and in 1938 he became president of the section in his parish. John Paul II recalled that Marcel did not reach Gospel perfection at once: he struggled with himself for a long time, but he let himself be led by grace. He fell in love with Marguerite Derniaux, who also belonged to the JOC, and they planned to marry.

On March 8, 1943, his sister Madeleine was killed in the bombing of Rennes. Right afterward Marcel received his summons to the Compulsory Work Service (STO) in Germany. Fearing reprisals against his family, he decided to go. He said that he was leaving not as a worker but as a missionary. He left Rennes on March 19, 1943, and was sent to an arms factory in Zella-Mehlis in Thuringia. He took his companions to Holy Mass, and with other JOC members and scouts he founded a Catholic Action group that worked in secret.

On April 19, 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo. The officer is reported to have said that Marcel was “too Catholic.” With eleven companions, among them a priest and three seminarians, he spent several months in the prison at Gotha, where they prayed together. From there he wrote to his brother that he had a friend, Christ, who did not leave him for a moment. The internment order stated that by their Catholic activity among French workers they had harmed the German people. In October 1944 Marcel was taken to the Flossenbürg camp and from there to Mauthausen. In the Gusen subcamps he worked beyond his strength, in the end in an underground factory.

Worn out by hunger, beatings, and illness, he was brought to the camp infirmary. He died on March 19, 1945, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, exactly two years after leaving Rennes. Colonel Tibodo, who witnessed his death, testified in the beatification process that Marcel had the look of a saint.

John Paul II beatified him on October 4, 1987, in Rome, together with two young Italian women, Antonia Mesina and Pierina Morosini, during the Synod of Bishops devoted to the laity. Pope Francis named him among the young saints in the exhortation Christus vivit. Marcel Callo was also one of the patrons of World Youth Day in Lisbon in 2023.