Portrait of Bl. Marcel Callo

Blessed · Feast March 19 · 1921–1945

Bl. Marcel Callo

Marcel Callo was born in Rennes, France, in 1921. He became an apprentice printer at thirteen, was a Scout, and joined the Young Christian Workers, a Catholic movement for working-class youth.

The story

Marcel Callo was born in Rennes, France, in 1921. He became an apprentice printer at thirteen, was a Scout, and joined the Young Christian Workers, a Catholic movement for working-class youth.

In 1943 the German occupiers sent him to Germany for forced labour, at Zella-Mehlis in Thuringia. He organised prayer and Mass for the French workers there. The Nazis arrested him in April 1944 for being, in their words, "too Catholic". He was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp and died there of exhaustion and illness on March 19, 1945, aged twenty-three. John Paul II beatified him in 1987.

Blessed, not yet a saint

Marcel Callo was beatified in 1987.

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

Sources

Sources & notes

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