On Saturday 13 December four Friars Minor were beatified in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. They are part of a group of fifty martyrs of the Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in France (1944-1945).

In the autumn of 1942, Germany began requisitioning many young Frenchmen, aged between 19 and 25, for compulsory labour service (STO) in Germany to provide manpower for the war effort.

During the summer of 1943, some Friars Minor, clerics of Champfleury near Paris, received the summons to join the forced labour. On 14 September, twelve young friars travelled as a community, wearing the Franciscan habit. When they reached the border, the Germans angrily stripped them of their religious habits and had them escorted to Cologne.

Upon reaching their destination, they were assigned to the Reichsbahn camp in a suburb of Cologne. The friars then set out to maintain community life in their barracks as best they could, maintaining, for example, discipline and a spirit of prayer. They thus positively influenced all the other workers in their terrible situation.

The friars managed to offer various services, some became nurses, others shoemakers. They formed a choir to enliven evenings and led times of prayer. Joy was their hallmark.

The Friars Minor were specifically accused of promoting, under the guise of a religious apostolate, the unity of French workers and prisoners against the Germans. The friars were arrested on 13 July 1944, and transported to

Brauweiler prison, then sent to Buchenwald except for one of them, who ended up in Flossenbürg.

Four never returned: now Blessed Gérard Cendrier, Paul Le Ber, Joseph Paraire, and Xavier Boucher.

For a fuller report, check out: www.ofm.org