Bl. Max Josef Metzger

Max Josef Metzger was born in 1887 at Schopfheim in southern Germany. He earned a doctorate in theology and was ordained a priest in 1911. He served as an army chaplain in the First World War until a serious illness sent him home in 1915.

After the war he worked for peace between nations. In 1917 he wrote an international religious peace programme and sent it to Pope Benedict XV, and he spoke at fourteen international congresses as a defender of peace. He founded a religious society, the Societas Christi Regis, now a secular institute (a community of people who take vows but live in the world). In 1939 he founded the Una Sancta brotherhood to pray and work for unity among Christians.

A woman to whom he had given a memorandum on peace and Germany's political future after the war denounced him. He was arrested in 1943, sentenced to death for "high treason and aiding the enemy", and guillotined at Brandenburg-Görden prison on April 17, 1944. He was beatified in 2024.

From prison he wrote to Pius XII asking him to call an ecumenical council at Assisi. The prison chaplain reported that he went to his death with eyes shining with joy.

Max Josef Metzger was beatified in 2024 by Pope Francis.

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