Youth is made for heroism, and that truism was honored at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in December when four Franciscan French friars, all of whom were martyred while still in their twenties, were beatified.
The men – Gerard Cendrier, Roger Le Ber, Joseph Paraire, and Xavier Boucher – were killed by the Nazis for ministering to their countrymen forced to work for Germany during World War II.
Their stories involve standing up for their faith and for their countrymen.
The background: in 1942, the occupying Nazis began forcing young French men to work as labor for the German war industry.
The French bishops, in response, established a secret mission to minister to the deportees.
Franciscan friars were among those sent to Germany to minister to the workers.
Twelve friar seminarians left for the mission in the fall of 1943. They did so openly and as a community. Upon arriving in Germany, the authorities confiscated their brown habits.
Still, as they arrived in their designated workplace, the friars continued to maintain their community, praying and living together. They formed a choir to keep up the morale of their fellow workers. Bro. Gerard organized visits to sick French workers in Cologne.
The French bishops’ mission to the workers was labeled subversive by the Nazi authorities. The friars’ ministerial work was identified by the Gestapo, who ordered the Franciscans sent to concentration camps. Upon arrival at one such camp, Bro. Gerard organized his fellow prisoners and formed a faith community with regular prayer, despite prohibitions on religious observance.
The other friars went to varied camps, their ministerial association split apart by the Nazis. The four who were beatified in Paris in December never returned home.
The martyrs were typical of pious young Frenchmen of their time, forced into a situation of moral crisis.
Bro. Gerard, born in 1920 in Paris, participated in scouting as a youth. He entered the Franciscan community in 1939, forgoing studies in law.
On the eve of taking the habit, he asked his parents to pray for him, “May I be able to wear the habit of the poor, but above all that Christ may be the one I wear, with whom I unite myself more and more, to the point of uniting myself to Him on the Cross if one day He asks me to.”
While imprisoned in Brauweiller, Bro. Gerard was known to invite his fellow prisoners to forgive their captors. He would sing Gregorian chant on Sundays and feast days and offered to share his meager bread ration with other prisoners.
Forced to undergo hunger and brutal working conditions, Bro. Gerard died in January 1945.
Brother Roger Le Ber wrote to his family about the ministry of the Franciscans to his fellow French workers: “In exile, it is St. Francis who attracts us. We feel an immense need for him, for his teaching, for his example, for his charm. When the opportunity arises to talk about it together, we all feel invigorated.”
In September 1944, Bro. Roger was sent to Buchenwald and then with Bro. Gerard was sent to an underground factory two months later. In April 1945, as the war was ending, the laborers were forced to leave the factory, but Bro. Roger was too weak to keep up with the rest of the group. He was shot to death by an SS officer.
Bro. Joseph Paraire was one of 15 children, an orphan raised by his older brothers.
On New Year’s Day, 1944, he wrote from Cologne, where he was employed as a laborer: “Here the task is immense: a dozen priests, former prisoners transformed into free workers, about forty seminarians recruited like us: these are the workers for the divine harvest in the Cologne region, which has about 15,000 Frenchmen.
If you knew how morally and spiritually abandoned they are, you would understand better how I cannot regret my departure from France, the interruption of my studies, the sleepless nights, a very monotonous job, and a life constantly in the noise! Could I, who had so much facility during my youth to instruct and form myself as a Christian, now leave my brother workers in need when I can extend my hand to them? No, Providence has sent us here and protects us in a visible way. As long as he shows us that our place is here, we will not abandon our place.”
Bro. Xavier Boucher was also forced to work in Cologne while ministering to the needs of his fellow worker prisoners. He ministered to the sick, including preparing a man for first Eucharist.
He was sent to Buchenwald in September 1944 and, two months later, to the underground factory in Langenstein. The brutal work caused him to weaken, and he died in his sleep in March 1945.
Beatification is a formal recognition by the Church that a person is now in heaven and grants them the title of “Blessed.” It can be the final step before canonization, the formal declaration of sainthood.