Marcel Callo

1921-1945 20th century Feast day: March 19

The faith of an ordinary young man held to the end; the friendship of Christ tested in exhaustion.

Who was Marcel Callo?

A printer in Rennes, a militant of the Young Christian Workers, engaged to Marguerite, he was conscripted for forced labour in Germany in March 1943 and left saying he was going as a missionary. At Zella-Mehlis he organised clandestine Masses and a YCW team for the French conscripts; arrested in April 1944 for being "too Catholic", he passed through Gotha, Flossenbürg and Mauthausen. There he died at twenty-three, worn out, on 19 March 1945.

In their own words

I am not leaving as a worker, but as a missionary.

Words reported at his departure for Germany, March 1943

Happily there is a Friend who does not leave me for a single moment and who knows how to hold me up and console me through the hard, crushing hours: with him one can bear anything.

Letter of 6 July 1944