Two Italian priests martyred under Nazism in 1944 to be beatified

By Alessandro Di Bussolo

The Church will soon have two new Blesseds, two young Italian priests and martyrs, killed by the Nazis in 1944 in Emilia Romagna, Italy, during the Nazi occupation.

During an audience granted on Friday 21 November to Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Pope Leo XIV authorized the promulgation of the decrees regarding the martyrdom — in hatred of the faith — of Fr. Ubaldo Marchioni, 26, bursar of the parish of San Martino di Caprara, and Fr. Martino Capelli, a Dehonian religious, 32, chaplain at San Michele di Salvaro.

They refused to abandon the communities entrusted to their care, communities that were tragically struck by SS round-ups. Also promulgated on Friday were the decrees recognizing the heroic virtues of four Servants of God, who thus become Venerable.

They are Archbishop Enrico Bartoletti of Lucca, Italy, and secretary of the Italian Bishops’ Conference; Fr. Gaspare Goggi, a priest of the Little Work of Divine Providence of Don Orione; Sister Maria of the Sacred Heart, born Maria Glowrey, an Australian doctor and religious of the Society of Jesus Mary Joseph, founder of the Catholic Health Association of India; and Maria de Lourdes Guarda, a Brazilian consecrated laywoman of the Secular Institute Caritas Christi.

Fr. Ubaldo: executed by the Nazis in a church

The first martyr, Fr. Ubaldo Marchioni, from Vimignano di Grizzana Morandi in the province of Bologna, Italy, was born in 1918, entered the diocesan seminary at the age of ten, and was ordained a priest at 24 in the Cathedral of Bologna.

He first served as a parish priest of San Nicolò della Gugliara, then in March 1944 was appointed spiritual advisor at San Martino di Caprara, a parish near an area held by Nazi troops engaged in combat with local partisans. During those months of war, Fr. Ubaldo remained close to his parishioners, sharing with them the risks of occupation and Nazi reprisals.

On 29 September 1944, on his way to the Oratory of the Guardian Angels in Cerpiano to celebrate Mass, he stopped in the Church of Santa Maria Assunta in Casaglia to safeguard the Blessed Sacrament and to give refuge to a small crowd of people frightened by the arrival of German soldiers.

Fr. Marchioni urged the men to hide in the woods, keeping only women and children inside the church, but negotiations with the Nazis to let them go failed: all were taken to the cemetery and killed. Fr. Ubaldo was brought back into the church and then shot in the head in front of the altar.

This showed the SS Nazis’ contempt for the Christian religion, and the fact that the body of the Servant of God was severely mutilated confirms the presence of odium fidei — “hatred of the faith.”

It is also a martyrdom ex parte victimae — “on the part of the victim” — because the young priest, killed at 26, consciously accepted the risk of death by choosing to remain with the faithful despite having the chance to escape.

Fr. Capelli: martyr at Pioppe di Salvaro

The second priest martyred by the Nazis is Father Martino Capelli. Born in Nembro, in the province of Bergamo, Italy, in 1912, he was baptized Nicola Giuseppe.

At 17 he entered the postulancy of the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Dehonians) in Albisola Superiore (Savona). As a novice he took the name Martino in memory of his father. After theological studies in Bologna, he was ordained a priest in 1938 at age 26. In Rome he studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, the Pontifical Urban University, and took courses at the Vatican School of Paleography. Assigned to teach Sacred Scripture and Church History at the Dehonian mission house in Bologna and later at Castiglione dei Pepoli, he moved with the students to Burzanella in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines during the war.

In the summer of 1944, Fr. Capelli went to Salvaro to assist the elderly parish priest of San Michele with pastoral care, despite the area being at the center of armed clashes involving Germans, Allies, and Partisans. He did not return to his community as the Dehonians had requested, fearing for his safety, but remained with the local population.

When the Nazi army occupied the Marzabotto and Monte Sole areas, where more than 770 people would be massacred, on 29 September 1944 — after the slaughter committed by the Nazis in nearby Creda — Fr. Martino rushed to bring comfort to the dying. He was imprisoned and forced to transport ammunition. Along with Salesian Fr. Elia Comini, who had been working with him in Salvaro, and about a hundred others (including other priests who were later released), he was taken to a stable in Pioppe di Salvaro, where he cared for and heard the confessions of the other prisoners.

On the evening of 1 October 1944 he was executed together with Fr. Comini and a group deemed “unfit for labor,” near the cistern of the silk-mill at Pioppe di Salvaro. His body, like those of the other victims, was thrown into the waters of the River Reno.

The primary motive for his martyrdom is considered odium fidei, “hatred of the faith,” because it stemmed mainly from the Nazis’ contempt for his priestly ministry. But it is also a martyrdom ex parte victimae, since, aware of the dangers and able to return safely to Bologna with his confrères, he chose instead to remain to assist the dying of the Creda massacre and the prisoners of Pioppe di Salvaro.

Archbishop Bartoletti: A “bridge-builder” of the post-Council era

Archbishop Enrico Bartoletti was born in 1916 in Calenzano, near Florence, Italy, into a deeply religious family.

At the age of 11 he entered the Florence seminary, and at 22 he was ordained a priest by Cardinal Dalla Costa. In Rome, at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, he focused on his study of Sacred Scripture. Returning to Florence, he became rector of the minor seminary. During World War II he collaborated with Cardinal Dalla Costa to protect Jews, sheltering them in the seminary, for which he was briefly arrested by the Nazi-Fascists.

From 1955 he served for three years as rector of the major seminary and came into contact with important figures such as Monsignor Giulio Facibeni, Fr. Divo Barsotti, Fr. Ernesto Balducci, Giorgio La Pira, the future Cardinal Silvano Piovanelli, and Fr. David Maria Turoldo. In 1958 he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Lucca, assisting Archbishop Torrini, and later took part in the Second Vatican Council. As administrator and then coadjutor to the ailing archbishop, Bartoletti promoted the implementation of the Council’s directives in the Diocese.

In September 1972, Saint Paul VI appointed him secretary of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. In January 1973, on Torrini’s death, he succeeded him as Archbishop of Lucca but resigned a few months later to devote himself entirely to the Bishops’ Conference during a difficult period for Italy.

In his three years as secretary, he oversaw the development of the pastoral guidelines on “Evangelization and Sacraments” and the preparation of the first national ecclesial congress on “Evangelization and Human Promotion.” Stricken by a heart attack, he died suddenly in Rome on 5 March 1976 at just 59. Bartoletti is considered a guide of the post-conciliar Church, endowed with great mediating ability, placed at the service of ecclesial communion and conciliar renewal.

Fr. Gaspare: Young disciple of Saint Orione

Born in 1877 in Pozzolo Formigaro, in the province of Alessandria, Italy, Gaspare Goggi met Saint Luigi Orione at the age of 15. Orione welcomed him into the nascent Little Work of Divine Providence and urged him to continue his studies, eventually earning a degree in Arts and Letters and Philosophy at the University of Turin. There he gathered a group of students who courageously professed their faith in a predominantly anticlerical environment.

At 26 he was ordained a priest and made his perpetual profession in the hands of Don Orione, who sent him first to Sanremo and then to Rome as rector of the church of Sant’Anna dei Palafrenieri in the Vatican. There he gained notoriety as a tireless and sought-after confessor — even by many prelates — and led a cenacle of prayer and culture. He generously served the poor of Borgo Pio and nearby neighborhoods, bringing bread and words of comfort.

Despite fragile health, he continued his ministry with dignity, patience, and humility. In 1908 his condition worsened; he returned to Piedmont to rest but soon required hospitalization. On 4 August, at only 31, he died in the hospital of Alessandria; Don Orione celebrated his funeral, which drew a large crowd. Even in life he was regarded as “a little saint” by the parishioners of Sant’Anna and within the Little Work of Divine Providence.

Australian doctor who became a missionary nun in India

Born in 1887 in Birregurra, Victoria (Australia), into a family of Irish origin, Sister Maria of the Sacred Heart — born Maria Glowrey — earned her medical degree in 1910 and began working at Saint Vincent’s Hospital, run by the Sisters of Charity. Inspired by Agnes McLaren, a Scottish-born doctor who, after converting to Catholicism, moved to India to care for women and children, and motivated by the urgent need for female medical staff (since cultural norms prohibited women from being treated by men), she chose to follow the same path.

She settled in the Diocese of Madras, residing from February 1920 in the Guntur convent of a Dutch congregation, the Society of Jesus Mary Joseph. She cared for a mostly Hindu population in a dispensary next to the convent, in a poor society marked by caste divisions in which women lacked rights. Desiring to serve others by consecrating herself to the Lord, she asked to join the Society of Jesus Mary Joseph and pronounced perpetual vows in November 1924, taking the name Sister Maria of the Sacred Heart.

An exemplary Christian woman, consecrated and committed to medical service to the poorest, she combined healthcare with evangelization, focused especially on women and children. She expanded the dispensary until it became today’s Saint Joseph’s Hospital, and she trained medical, nursing, and midwifery staff, transmitting the principles of Catholic medical ethics.

In 1943 she founded the Catholic Health Association of India, which she led until 1951, and worked on demographic issues, collaborating with Professor John Billings, creator of a natural fertility-regulation method. She also founded the Catholic Hospital Association. Stricken with breast cancer, she died on 5 May 1957 in Bangalore.

Maria de Lourdes: Apostle to people with disabilities

Born in 1926 in Salto, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, into a family of Italian origin, Maria de Lourdes Guarda spent nearly fifty years bedridden because of a serious spinal injury.

This prevented her from entering the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Chambéry, but not from taking part in the spiritual retreats and meetings of the Secular Institute Caritas Christi, in which she consecrated herself in 1970.

At just 21, in February 1948, she became paralyzed in the lower body and had to live in a plaster cast. Hospitalized, she developed a deep spiritual relationship with the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and offered her sufferings to the Lord, which increased due to kidney disease and gangrene that led to the amputation of a leg.

Through intense prayer, she found the strength to respond with faith to her severe infirmity, and her hospital room became a center of meetings to coordinate various apostolic activities. In the contemplation of the Eucharist, Maria found consolation and peace, which she then shared with others.

She offered advice and encouragement to those who visited her and served for ten years as national coordinator of the “Fraternity of Persons with Disabilities,” working for the inclusion of people with disabilities in society and the recognition of their rights.

Her suffering increased in her final years, and she died of bladder cancer on 5 May 1996. Her reputation for holiness, already strong in life, grew further after her death.