Marcel Callo — born in Rennes on 6 December 1921 and dead in the Mauthausen-Gusen camp on 19 March 1945 — was a young Breton typesetter, a member of the Young Christian Workers (YCW), and a martyr who died out of hatred for the faith in the Nazi concentration-camp universe.[1][2] Requisitioned for the Service du travail obligatoire (STO), the forced-labor scheme imposed on French youth, he left Brittany saying that he was going "not as a worker, but as a missionary."[3][4] Where others endured exile, he saw a field of apostolate: among uprooted and dechristianized companions, he rebuilt a clandestine Christian community around Mass and fraternity.[5][6]
That activity made this twenty-two-year-old dangerous in the eyes of the occupier. The Gestapo arrested him on 19 April 1944, not for an act of armed resistance, but for his Catholic action: to one of his companions who asked the reason for the arrest, the agent is said to have answered "The gentleman is much too Catholic."[7][8] From prison to prison — Gotha, Flossenbürg — he was thrown into the hell of Mauthausen and assigned to the terrible Gusen Kommando (forced-labor detachment). He died there of exhaustion, tuberculosis and dysentery on 19 March 1945, at the age of 23, exactly two years after his departure for Germany.[9][10]
Recognized as a martyr in odium fidei, he was beatified by John Paul II on 4 October 1987, during the Synod devoted to the laity, alongside two young Italian women martyrs, Antonia Mesina and Pierina Morosini.[11][12] A YCW activist raised to the altars, Marcel Callo became one of the great figures of worker holiness in the twentieth century and a patron of committed Christian youth.
A Child of Rennes in the Working World (1921-1934)
Birth in a Large Christian Family
Marcel Callo was born on 6 December 1921 in Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine, in a popular district of the Breton capital.[13][14] He was the second of nine children, in a modest, hardworking and deeply Christian household where faith was not a Sunday ornament but the very texture of daily life.[15][16] More than one vocation would come from that home: according to biographical accounts, his brother Jean became a priest — ordained in June 1943, three months after Marcel's departure for Germany.[17][18]
A lively, cheerful and almost scrupulously organized child, Marcel was remembered by those close to him as a natural leader, strong-willed and athletic — he liked ping-pong and cards — but with no trace of religious lukewarmness.[19] An altar server from early childhood, he grew up in a popular Breton Catholicism still vigorous, yet already undermined in the working world by rapid dechristianization.
The Eucharistic Crusade and Scouting
Very young, Marcel entered the Eucharistic Crusade, a movement of piety that formed children in regular sacramental life — prayer, Communion, sacrifice, apostolate.[20] Biographical tradition sums up this motto in four verbs: pray, receive Communion, sacrifice oneself, be an apostle. Those four demands announce his whole life in advance: the man he became did not invent anything; he brought what he had learned as a child to white heat.
Around the age of ten, he became a scout, learning team life, service and commitment.[21][22] He remained only briefly: the world of work, into which he was thrown very early, soon redirected his generosity toward an apostolate closer to his own people, that of young workers.
The Apprentice Typesetter
At twelve, on 1 October 1934, Marcel began an apprenticeship with a printer in Rennes to learn the trade of typesetter.[23][24] He suddenly discovered the workshop, fatigue, coarse speech, pressure and irreligion in a milieu where the young Christian had to choose: blend in or bear witness. Marcel chose. He deliberately avoided the company of those who blasphemed and attached himself to companions who shared his faith, without cutting himself off from the others.[25][26]
In that workshop his master conviction was forged: holiness is not reserved for the cloister; it is played out at the workbench, in the working world itself. When his mother later asked whether he felt called to the priesthood, he answered her, according to his biographers, that he did not feel called to it and believed he did more good by remaining in the world.[27]
The YCW Activist (1935-1943)
Entering the Young Christian Workers
In 1935, Marcel joined the Young Christian Workers (YCW), the Catholic Action movement founded in Belgium by Father Joseph Cardijn to evangelize the working world through workers themselves.[28][29] For this boy eager to act, the discovery was a liberation: the YCW finally gave him a field equal to his zeal, where faith was no longer only a personal practice but a collective mission: it was, according to his biographers, the joy of a young Christian who had at last found how to put his life at the service of his brothers.[30]
The YCW method — "See, judge, act" — fitted his concrete temperament exactly. Marcel did not theorize charity: he organized it. Team meetings, visits to the sick, support for apprentices, fraternal presence in the workshop: faith became in him fieldwork, patient and joyful.
Section Leader at Seventeen
His generosity and seriousness quickly marked him out. In 1938, at seventeen, he was elected president of the Saint-Aubin YCW section in Rennes.[31][32] He took seriously Cardijn's conviction, reported by Jo Weber, that a young worker is worth more than all the gold in the world[33]: he wanted every young worker to discover his dignity as a son of God. Marcel placed the spiritual life — daily Mass, prayer, the sacraments — as the source of all action, refusing the hollow activism of militancy without interior life.[34]
Clandestinity under the Occupation
The war changed everything. After the defeat of 1940 and the Occupation, youth movements such as the YCW were watched and hindered, forced into discretion.[35] Marcel did not give up: he kept meetings going, adapted, protected, continued to gather. He was already learning a faith that costs, a fidelity put to the test — an involuntary preparation for what awaited him in Germany.
Marguerite: The Engagement
According to biographical accounts, it was in November 1941 that Marcel met Marguerite Derniaux, who was also involved in Catholic Action.[36] A straightforward, lucid love grew between them, wholly oriented toward the project of a Christian home. The engagement followed — from August 1942 according to the New Catholic Encyclopedia[37] — and the wedding was planned for June 1943.[38] This human love, far from turning him away from God, rooted him more deeply in Him: in the letters he later wrote from the depths of exile, Marguerite remained the face of the life he hoped for and offered.
Bereavement: The Bombing of Rennes (March 1943)
In the spring of 1943, history closed brutally around the young couple's plans. On 8 March 1943, Rennes suffered a violent Allied bombing that killed hundreds. Among the victims was Marcel's sister, Marie-Madeleine.[39][40] Marcel, shattered but standing, had to organize his sister's funeral. Eleven days later, the requisition order arrived: he himself was required for the Service du travail obligatoire in Germany. The same month tore a sister from him and tore him from his own family.
"I Leave as a Missionary": The STO at Zella-Mehlis (1943-1944)
The Compulsory Labor Service
Instituted in February 1943 by the Vichy regime to supply labor to the German war industry, the STO deported hundreds of thousands of young Frenchmen to factories in the Reich.[41] On 19 March 1943, Marcel Callo left Rennes for Zella-Mehlis, in Thuringia, where he was assigned to an armaments factory.[42][43] Many in his place chose flight or hiding. Marcel discerned in this ordeal a call.
Not as a Worker, but as a Missionary
He formulated that discernment to those close to him in a sentence that became famous and says everything about his lay vocation:
"It is not as a worker, he told his family, that I am going there. I am leaving as a missionary; there is so much to do to make Christ known." — Marcel Callo, to his family, March 1943[44][45]
This was not pious bravado. Marcel carried with him, in every circumstance, his scout and YCW badges, signs of the Christian identity he never denied.[46] He left with the clear conscience of one sent: where the Church was absent, he would be the presence of Christ.
Crossing the Desert
The beginnings were nevertheless terrible. Far from his family, exhausted by work, surrounded by moral misery, Marcel went through a real crisis. For two months he almost sank, seized by discouragement. He confided it himself to his fiancée:
"Here, there are many moral wounds to dress... The two months after my arrival were extremely hard and painful." — Marcel Callo, letter to Marguerite from Zella-Mehlis[47]
What raised him up was not a burst of willpower, but a return to the sources: prayer, the Eucharist found again, and the decision to regain his footing by serving others. The missionary, knocked down for a moment, stood up again.
The Clandestine Apostolate
Marcel then gathered around him the young French workers in the camp — often dechristianized, uprooted and without bearings.[48][49] He organized meetings, vigils, songs, improvised theatre and fraternal services. Above all, he obtained that a German chaplain who spoke French come to celebrate Mass for the Frenchmen. Around this Mass there formed "a warm group", a small Christian community that gave back the taste for living and believing.[50] Marcel naturally became the leader of the YCW section at Zella-Mehlis.[51][52]
This spiritual work was also an act of interior resistance: in the heart of a system designed to crush men and reduce them to cogs, Marcel maintained dignity, fraternity and hope. That is exactly what the regime could not tolerate.
The Arrest: "The Gentleman Is Much Too Catholic" (April 1944)
One Mass Too Many
Marcel's Christian activity did not long escape surveillance. His meetings, his influence, the French Mass he had helped revive, the cohesion of the YCW group: all this appeared to the occupier as an organized force and therefore as suspect.[53] On 19 April 1944, the Gestapo arrested him.[54][55]
A Religious Motive, Not a Political One
The motive for the arrest is decisive in the eyes of Church history. Marcel Callo had taken no part in sabotage or armed resistance. According to his companions' account, the agent who came to arrest him justified the measure with one word: "The gentleman is much too Catholic" — a Catholic action judged dangerous by the Nazi regime.[56][57] The accusation did not target a political opponent: it targeted a believer. This is what would make Marcel Callo, in the strict sense, a martyr in odium fidei — put to death in hatred of the faith.
"The gentleman is much too Catholic." — Reason for Marcel Callo's arrest, according to his companions' account, April 1944[58][59]
The Prisons of Gotha and Flossenbürg
Then began the prison Calvary. Marcel was first detained for several months in Gotha prison, with eleven fellow Catholic leaders from Thuringia arrested like him, then transferred in autumn 1944 toward the concentration-camp world: Flossenbürg, before the final destination.[60][61] Separated from everything, deprived of regular access to the sacraments, he held on through prayer and through the certainty of an interior presence that he would confide in one of his last letters.
"Fortunately, there is a Friend who does not leave me for a single instant, and who knows how to sustain me in painful and crushing hours. With Him, one can bear everything." — Marcel Callo, last letter from Germany, 6 July 1944[62]
The Martyrdom of Mauthausen-Gusen (1944-1945)
The Hell of Gusen
On 26 October 1944, Marcel entered the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria and was assigned to the Gusen Kommando — first Gusen I, then Gusen II from 7 November — one of the deadliest, where deportees worked in underground factories for the war industry.[63][64][65] Twelve-hour days, calculated undernourishment, blows, cold and exhaustion: Gusen was a machine for killing slowly. Marcel's body, already worn down, inexorably broke.
A Luminous Witness amid the Horror
And yet, in that hell, the survivors did not forget his face. His companions in deportation testified to a man who, at the end of his strength, continued to comfort others, share, pray and keep hope. According to biographical accounts, one of them, Maurice Gresset, spoke of the unanimous esteem Marcel had won among the Frenchmen of the camp.[66]
Marcel's faith was not an egoistic refuge: it radiated upon those around him. To the end, he remained what he had wanted to be when leaving Rennes: a missionary.
Death at the Revier, 19 March 1945
Wasted by tuberculosis, dysentery, hunger and exhaustion, Marcel was finally taken to the Revier, the camp infirmary — the antechamber of the crematorium —, on 5 January 1945.[67][68][69] There he died at dawn on 19 March 1945, the feast of Saint Joseph, exactly two years after his departure for Germany. He was twenty-three. His body, according to biographical accounts, was thrown into a common grave and was never found.[70]
Colonel Albert Tibodo, also a prisoner, witnessed his last moments and kept a deeply moved memory of them, which would weigh heavily in the beatification process — John Paul II himself would take it up in the beatification homily[71]:
"I knew Marcel Callo for only a few hours, those that preceded his death in March 1945 [...]: he died in a way in my arms. [...] If I have kept his memory, whereas I knew many prisoners, it is because Marcel Callo had a truly supernatural gaze." — Colonel Albert Tibodo, witness of his death[72][73]
The Spirituality of Marcel Callo
"A Friend Who Never Leaves Me": The Eucharistic Heart
Marcel Callo's whole interior life rests on one presence: that of the Eucharistic Christ, discovered as a child in the Eucharistic Crusade and never abandoned. Daily Mass was the center of gravity of his existence; it was this that he sought to revive for his companions in the STO, and this again that sustained him when everything else was taken away.[74][75] The "Friend who does not leave me for a single instant" in his last letter is not a sentimental image: it is the lived theology of a layman who made Communion the source of his action.
Suffering for Those We Love: The Cross
Marcel did not passively undergo his Passion: he offered it. In his letters, he explicitly united his suffering to Christ's and to the good of those he loved.
"Yes, how sweet and comforting it is to suffer for those we love..." — Marcel Callo, letter from captivity[76]
Written in the night of a camp, this sentence transfigures his death: it is no longer only an injustice endured; it becomes a gift. That is exactly what the Church would recognize in declaring him a martyr.
Catholic Action as a Path of Holiness
The most original trait of Marcel Callo is that he was holy precisely where he was: in the workshop, the factory, the camp, without ever changing his state of life. He refused the priesthood not out of tepidity but from a proper vocation, convinced that he could "do more good by remaining in the world."[77] His holiness is a lay and worker holiness, entirely faithful to the intuition of the YCW: the Christian worker is not a second-class Christian; he is an apostle among his brothers. In this, Marcel Callo anticipates the universal call to holiness that the Second Vatican Council would proclaim in Lumen gentium.
From the Common Grave to the Altars
The Beatification Process
Marcel Callo's memory did not disappear with him. Carried by the YCW, by the diocese of Rennes and by the testimonies of his companions in deportation, his cause was introduced. According to biographical notices, the diocesan inquiry opened in Rennes in 1968, and the process advanced to the recognition of his virtues and, above all, his martyrdom.[78][79] Like all martyrs recognized in odium fidei, he could be beatified without a required miracle, since martyrdom itself is a sign of holiness.
4 October 1987: Three Young Lay Martyrs
On 4 October 1987, in Saint Peter's Basilica, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Marcel Callo blessed.[80][81] The date was not accidental: the ceremony opened at the very moment of the Synod of Bishops devoted to the vocation and mission of the laity. Marcel Callo was not beatified alone: he was beatified with two young Italian women, Antonia Mesina and Pierina Morosini, also laywomen and martyrs.[82] Three young members of the People of God — a Breton worker and two young women — were offered as examples to a Church reflecting on the possible holiness of the laity in the heart of the world.
Patronages and Legacy
Marcel Callo, a beatified YCW activist, is the natural patron of young Christian workers and students, Catholic Action movements and young workers.[83] Schools, parishes, scout groups and chaplaincies bear his name, in France and overseas.[84][85] His feast is fixed on 19 April in the diocese of Rennes, the day of his arrest; 19 March, the day of his death, is already the feast of Saint Joseph, patron of workers.[86][87][88]
What Blessed Marcel Callo Teaches Today
Marcel Callo's figure speaks with particular force to our time. To a world that readily opposes faith and commitment, interior life and action, he offers a burning unity: it was because he received Communion every day that he could serve every day. To a youth tempted by disenchantment, he shows that a man of twenty can give his life quietly, without weapons, by simple fidelity to what he believes. And to a Church sometimes tempted to reserve holiness for clerics and monks, he recalls that the workshop, the factory, the office and even the camp can be places of completed holiness.
His martyrdom, finally, states a truth for which the twentieth century paid dearly: the mere fact of being "too Catholic" — that is, of living one's faith to the end and radiating it around oneself — was enough to make him a mortal enemy of totalitarianism. Marcel Callo did not seek martyrdom; he simply refused to stop loving, praying and gathering. It is this gentle and unshakeable perseverance — the missionary who never stops — that the Church now proposes for the imitation of all the baptized.
Further Reading
- Blessed Miguel Pro (1891-1927) — Mexican Jesuit, twentieth-century priest martyr who died with the cry "Long live Christ the King!", close to Marcel Callo's spirit of clandestine and joyful apostolate.
- Blessed Frederic Ozanam (1813-1853) — layman, scholar and apostle of charity among workers, another major figure of Christian commitment in the world of work.
- Blessed Antoine Chevrier (1826-1879) — priest of the poor and working districts of Lyon, founder of the Prado, close to the spirituality of stripping and popular proximity in which Marcel Callo lived.
- Blessed Solanus Casey (1870-1957) — American Capuchin contemporary of Callo, another witness to humble and hidden holiness in the twentieth century.
Notes and References
Notes and References
Wikipedia (English), article "Marcel Callo": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Callo. Born on 6 December 1921 in Rennes, second of nine children; brother Jean became a priest; altar server; scout at ten; apprentice typesetter on 1 October 1934; joined the YCW in 1935; reply to his mother on the priesthood ("I believe I do more good by remaining in the world"); engaged to Marguerite Derniaux; conscripted for the STO on 19 March 1943 ("I leave as a missionary"); wore scout and YCW badges; work at Zella-Mehlis; arrested by the Gestapo on 19 April 1944 as "too Catholic"; Gotha then Flossenbürg (October 1944), then Mauthausen (Gusen I and II); twelve-hour forced labor; death on 19 March 1945 (tuberculosis and dysentery), at 23; common grave, body not found; testimony of Colonel Tibodo; process opened in Rennes in 1968, Servant of God in 1982, beatification by John Paul II on 4 October 1987 without a required miracle (death in odium fidei).
1 8 9 12 13 19 21 23 25 27 28 46 54 68 70 77 78 81Le Maitron — Dictionnaire biographique / Fusillés, guillotinés, exécutés, massacrés (1940-1944), notice "CALLO Marcel": fusilles-40-44.maitron.fr/callo-marcel (notice of 25 October 2008). Typesetter, federal YCW activist; Eucharistic Crusade then Scouts de France in 1933; requisitioned for the STO in March 1943, three days after the death of his sister Marie-Madeleine in a bombing ("I do not leave as a worker, I leave as a missionary"); arrested for his Catholic militancy on 19 April 1944; Gotha prison with eleven fellow Catholic leaders from Thuringia; Flossenbürg then Mauthausen in October, work in an underground factory; death from exhaustion in the camp infirmary on 19 March 1945; private schools and parish groupings bearing his name; beatified by John Paul II on 4 October 1987 during the Synod on the laity.
2 10 14 39 41 42 52 57 60 85Collège des Bernardins, "Bienheureux Marcel Callo : héros de la jeunesse catholique": collegedesbernardins.fr. President of the Saint-Aubin YCW section at 17 (1938); elder brother Jean to be ordained priest in June (1943); departure on 19 March 1943 ("It is not as a worker, he told his family, that I am going there. I am leaving as a missionary; there is so much to do to make Christ known."); letter to his fiancée from Zella-Mehlis ("there are many moral wounds to dress... the two months after my arrival were extremely hard and painful"); arrest on 19 April 1944, the agent answering comrade Joël "The gentleman is much too Catholic"; last letter from Germany dated 6 July 1944 ("Fortunately, there is a Friend who does not leave me for a single instant and who knows how to sustain me in painful and crushing hours. With Him, one can bear everything."); words on offered suffering ("how sweet and comforting it is to suffer for those we love"); death on 19 March 1945 at Mauthausen; beatification on 4 October 1987.
3 7 18 29 31 44 47 50 56 58 62 76Le Jour du Seigneur, "Marcel Callo" (great figures, 16 April 2025): lejourduseigneur.com/grandes-figures/marcel-callo. Worker from Rennes, member of the YCW, section president; departure for the STO ("It is not as a worker that I am going there: I leave as a missionary"); network of spiritual resistance in Thuringia; arrest in April 1944, the agent answering "The gentleman is much too Catholic"; Gotha with eleven other young men, Flossenbürg then Mauthausen "at the end of October", underground factory; death at 23 on 19 March 1945, Tibodo's testimony ("deep conviction that he was departing toward happiness"); canonical process in the 1960s, beatification on 4 October 1987; figure of committed Catholic youth.
4 32 45 79 83Église catholique en France, "Bienheureux Marcel Callo" (saint of the day, notice published on 19 April): eglise.catholique.fr/saint-du-jour/19/04/bienheureux-marcel-callo. Member of the YCW in Brittany, fiancée in the movement; departure "as a missionary, to help his YCW brothers"; gathering of French workers around Masses celebrated by a German chaplain who spoke French, forming "a warm group" that drew the Gestapo's attention; arrest for his Catholic action; deportation to Mauthausen, work in an underground factory; death in the infirmary near the crematorium, from malnutrition, tuberculosis and dysentery, supporting his companions to the end.
5 48 53 65 69Jeunes Cathos (CEF), "Bienheureux Marcel Callo, une vie offerte pour un monde meilleur": jeunes-cathos.fr. Membership in the Eucharistic Crusade (motto "Pray, receive Communion, sacrifice yourself, be an apostle"); responsibilities in the YCW, maintained under the Occupation despite surveillance and constraints — the site mentions its clandestine continuation from 1940; STO at Zella-Mehlis in 1943, organization of the group's Christian life; arrest by the Gestapo "because he was too Catholic"; Gotha prison then deportation to Flossenbürg and Mauthausen; death on 19 March 1945 "from exhaustion and stomach sufferings"; beatification on 4 October 1987.
6 16 20 35 49 74Homily of John Paul II for the beatification of Marcel Callo, Antonia Mesina and Pierina Morosini, 4 October 1987 (Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, opening of the Synod of Bishops on the vocation and mission of the laity), Italian text: vatican.va. The pope declares of the three new blesseds: "Tutti e tre sono laici, sono giovani, sono martiri!" ("All three are lay people, are young, are martyrs!"); on Callo, he takes up Colonel Tibodo's testimony, who saw thousands of prisoners die and assisted Marcel at dawn on 19 March 1945: "Marcel aveva lo sguardo di un santo" ("Marcel had the gaze of a saint"). The homily also confirms that Callo wrote from prison to his brother "recentemente ordinato sacerdote" ("recently ordained priest"). Place of the ceremony: Saint Peter's Basilica — the list of John Paul II's beatifications gives "Roma, Basilica di San Pietro, 4 ottobre 1987" for Callo, Mesina and Morosini, and the English-language notice for Pierina Morosini (same ceremony) likewise indicates "Saint Peter's Basilica".
11 71 73 80 82Réflexion chrétienne, "Bienheureux Marcel Callo, jeune ouvrier et martyr (1921-1945), fête le 19 mars": reflexionchretienne.fr. Second of nine children in a Christian family from Rennes; entered the Eucharistic Crusade at 12; apprentice typesetter from 12; YCW section president; primacy of the spiritual life as source of action in a dechristianized working world; loss of a sister in a 1943 bombing; fiancée Marguerite Derniaux; STO at Zella-Mehlis, revolver factory; clandestine Christian life; arrest on 19 April 1944, the Gestapo judging him "too Catholic"; Gotha prison, then Flossenbürg and Mauthausen; Gusen II, "the worst of the Kommandos"; death on 19 March 1945 from exhaustion, malnutrition, tuberculosis and dysentery; Colonel Tibodo's testimony on his "supernatural gaze"; beatification on 4 October 1987 by John Paul II.
15 34 51 55 59 75Mag Généalogie — Arbres et histoires, "Marcel Callo, de l'insouciance au martyre": maggenealogie-arbresethistoires.com/marcel-callo-de-linsouciance-au-martyre. Death of his sister in the bombing of Rennes (March 1943); meeting Marguerite Derniaux in November 1941, engagement, wedding planned for June 1943; brother Jean ordained priest in June 1943; departure for Zella-Mehlis (Thuringia) in March 1943; departure quotation "as a missionary"; testimony of Maurice Gresset ("he was my friend and the friend of all the Frenchmen in the camp..."); testimony of Colonel Albert Tibodo ("Marcel Callo had a truly supernatural gaze... I have never seen such a look in a dying man"); prisons and deportation to Gusen; death on 19 March 1945.
17 36 38 40 43 66Scoutopedia (French-language ScoutWiki), article "Marcel Callo": fr.scoutwiki.org/Marcel_Callo. Marcel Callo's scouting background, reorientation toward the YCW, memory carried by scout groups and institutions bearing his name; biographical landmarks of his life and martyrdom.
22 84Diocèse de Cambrai, fact sheet "Marcel Callo (1921-1945)": media.cathocambrai.com/282823.pdf (fact sheet reproducing the dossier of the official site www.marcelcallo.fr). Apprenticeship at 12; arrest on 19 April 1944 "because he was too Catholic"; Gotha prison with the YCW leaders of Thuringia (twelve in all); Gusen II "the worst of the Kommandos"; death from exhaustion on 19 March 1945; "Blessed Marcel Callo is now celebrated in his diocese of Rennes on 19 April, the date on which he was arrested [...]; 19 March, the date of his death, being the feast of Saint Joseph" (wording corroborated by French-language Wikipedia: "Marcel Callo is celebrated on 19 March [...], and on 19 April [...] in the diocese of Rennes"); Tibodo's full testimony ("he died in a way in my arms... a truly supernatural gaze... a gaze of hope... I have never seen such a look in a dying man").
24 26 64 72 86Encyclopedia.com, "Callo, Marcel, Bl." (from the New Catholic Encyclopedia): encyclopedia.com. Engagement (August 1942); organization of the YCW in the labor camp; arrest by the Gestapo on 19 April 1944 "for excessive Catholic activity"; Gotha prison, Flossenbürg camp, Mauthausen camp (26 October 1944), Gusen I then Gusen II (7 November), infirmary (5 January 1945); death from malnutrition and exhaustion; beatification on 4 October 1987; feast: 19 April.
30 37 61 63 67 87Stefan Gigacz, “More than all the gold in the world”, Cardijn Research: cardijnresearch.org/more-than-all-the-gold-in-the-world. According to the testimony of Jo Weber, former treasurer of the International Young Christian Workers, Joseph Cardijn is said to have expressed this conviction in Minas Gerais (Brazil), indignant at the conditions of the young workers in a gold mine; the formula was already circulating in the French YCW (La Jeunesse Ouvrière, 1930).
33Archdiocese of Cologne, dossier "Marcel Callo — 19. April": erzbistum-koeln.de. Commemoration on 19 April; arrested in April 1944 "weil er „viel zu katholisch“ war"; Gotha prison then Mauthausen, death from exhaustion on 19 March 1945.
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