Bl. Franz Jägerstätter

Franz Jägerstätter was a farmer in the Austrian village of St. Radegund. He was born in 1907 to an unmarried mother, and he took the surname of the man she later married. As a young man he was a bit wild; he was the first person in the village to own a motorcycle.

He married Franziska in 1936 and they had three daughters. He also became the parish sexton, the layman who looks after the church building and helps at services. He began to receive Communion every day. When Germany took over Austria in 1938, he was the only person in his village to vote against it.

Called up for the German army in 1943, he refused to serve. He said he could not fight in an unjust war for a regime that persecuted the Church. His priest, his bishop and his neighbours urged him to give in for his family's sake. He was tried for undermining military morale and beheaded in Brandenburg on August 9, 1943. He was beatified in 2007.

Jägerstätter was not part of any resistance group. He was an ordinary husband and father who would not do what he believed was wrong, even when almost everyone he trusted told him to. In prison he wrote that he was leaving his family in God's hands.

Franz Jägerstätter was beatified in 2007.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.