Marcel Callo
Marcel Callo (1921 - 1945) was born on December 6th 1921 with Rennes, and died on March 19th 1945 with Mauthausen. It was béatifié in 1987.
Its life
Junior by a family of 9 children, a deeply Christian medium, it enters in training to 12 years in a typographer to Rennes, while one of his/her brothers joined the seminar.
He adheres to the eucharistic crusade, (currently entitled MEJ) obeying the currency: “ Requests, communie, is sacrificed, would be apostle ” and enters to the scouts.
Later, it leaves scouting, to enter to JOC (Christian Working Youth) where it makes a point of privileging the spiritual life like source of any action, in a working world very dechristianized at that time. Become president of the section, he is spent without measurement to assume all kinds of responsibilities.
However its close relations testify that its character was very marked, that it could be heading and that it wanted to always be right!
Marcel Callo becomes engaged to an young girl belonging to this movement.
The armistice of 1940 brings a great turning: the activities of associations are officially prohibited and the sections must act in clandestinity; one speaks then about “JOC of the catacombs”.
The war, the STO and deportation
The shortly after the bombardment of Rennes, on March 8th 1943, while his/her Marie-madeleine sister died under the bombs, it receives the order to leave for Germany under the Service Obligatory Work. He said: “ I leave not as worker, but as missionary near my comrades ”.
He is led in Thuringe where he meets a group of German Members of the J.O.C. and their chaplain. Marcel then involves with him other French comrades hardly familiar of the frequentation of the church. He behaves “ as a missionary, to help his brothers members of the J.O.C. ”. A cordial group is formed thus around him, which draws at once the attention of the Gestapo which hardly likes this “ catholic action ”.
It is condemned on the pretext that: “ By its catholic action near his/her comrades of Service of Obligatory Work, was harmful with the Nazi regime and the hello of the German people ”.
The Nazis stop it with his group on March 19th 1944. Initially transferred to the prison from Gotha then to Flossenbürg, it arrives finally at Mauthausen.
There, suffering the hunger and thirst, beaten, working in an underground factory, its faith does not cease growing. Soon, to end of force, it is sent to the infirmary, two steps of the crematorium. There, it will continue to support his companions in suffering, until the end, “ helping them to hold ”. He dies of exhaustion, undermined by the dysentery, on March 19th 1945.
Colonel Tibodo, who had seen dying of the thousands of prisoners, assisted it at the dawn of March 19th, 1945; he testifies with insistence and emotion: “ Marcel had the glance of a saint ”.
Beatification
At the time of the Synod of Laic to Rome, on October 4th 1987, Jean-Paul II béatifiait Marcel Callo.
The cause of the collective beatification of about fifty others " martyrs of STO" is always in hand since the end of the year 1980. It is indeed within a group of persons in charge of the clandestine Catholic Action in Thuringe that Marcel Callo was stopped. If it is an emblematic figure, its destiny is by no means separable of that of his/her comrades of misfortune, in this area as through all Germany.
Celebrates
March 19th
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