Saint Who?
Saints Who Promoted Eucharistic Devotion
Blessed Marcel Callo
Martyr († 1945) Feast: March 19
“By the Mass and by Communion, I must become more and more like Christ.” Marcel Callo was born in France in 1921. As a boy he helped out with his large family, served Mass, and was an enthusiastic member of the Scouts. He also joined the Young Christian Workers Movement, where he made good friends, one of whom recalled later that Marcel had him helped to understand the Mass better. “For Marcel, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was central. For him, the Host was not ‘something’ but ‘Someone,’ Jesus Christ.”
At twenty, Marcel became engaged to Marguerite Derniaux, but before they could be married, he was shipped out of the country to a Nazi-run labor camp. Lonely and sick, Marcel fell into a deep depression. Then, he wrote, “Christ chose to act. He made me understand that this depression was not good, that I must keep busy with my friends. Then, joy and peace came back to me.”
He became a missionary, following a plan of prayer life formed with his fiancée, organizing recreation and Mass for his fellow workers, and practicing joy despite increasing poor health. Arrested for being “too Catholic,” he was sent to a concentration camp to die, yet remained a beacon of holiness. At Marcel’s beatification, John Paul II said: “His entire life became the Eucharist.”
Dearest Jesus, through the prayers of Blessed Marcel, transform us into yourself
and bring joy into our darkness.
