Pope Recognises Martyrdom of 50 Frenchmen Killed by Nazis

by CNS · June 21, 2025

Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, addresses Pope Leo XIV in this file photo from June 13, 2025. Pope Leo approved several decrees advancing other sainthood causes June 20 at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

By Cindy Wooden, CNS – Pope Leo XIV formally recognised the martyrdom of 50 French priests, seminarians and laymen who died in Gestapo custody, Nazi concentration camps or because of their imprisonment during World War II.

The men, most of whom were in their 20s when they died in 1944 and 1945, were arrested after going to Germany to minister to and support Frenchmen forced to go to Germany as part of the Compulsory Work Service.

“They were arrested for subversive activity against the Third Reich and then tortured,” the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints said June 20 after Pope Leo signed the decrees.

The martyrs, it said, gave witness to their Christian faith “in full awareness of the possibility of being killed and in trusting abandonment to the divine will.”

The cause is formally listed as that of “Cayré, Cendrier, Vallée, Mestre and 46 companions” — citing by name: one diocesan priest, Father Raymond Cayré; one religious order priest, Franciscan Father Gérard-Martin Cendrier; one seminarian, Roger Vallée; and one layman, Jean Mestre.

Most of the laymen were members of the Catholic scouting movement or the Young Christian Workers Movement.

The largest group died in the Buchenwald concentration camp, but some died in Dachau, the Zöschen camp or Mauthausen. Joël Anglès d’Auriac, a 22-year-old member of the Scouts, was beheaded in Dresden in 1944.

The recognition of martyrdom clears the way for their beatification.

In a meeting with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Pope Leo also signed seven other decrees, including:

— Recognising the miracle needed for the beatification of Father Salvador Valera Parra, a Spanish priest who lived from 1816 to 1889.

The approved miracle involved the healing of a baby boy born in 2007 at Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The doctor, who was from Spain, prayed to Father Valera when the baby was born without a perceptible heartbeat. After the prayer, the dicastery said, the baby’s heart began to beat, and he began to breathe. He had other serious problems, but they all resolved and he went on to grow normally.

— Two separate decrees recognising the martyrdom of 124 priests, lay men, lay women and the abbess of a Poor Clare monastery in the Diocese of Jaén, Spain, killed between 1936 and 1938 during the Spanish Civil War. The group is divided into two separate sainthood causes based on where they were killed.

— Recognising the heroic virtues of Missionary of the Sacred Heart Father Raffaele Mennella, an Italian who was born in 1877 and died in 1898.

— Recognising the heroic virtues of João Luiz Pozzobon, a permanent deacon, widower and father, who was born in 1904 in Cachoeira, Brazil, and died in 1985.

— Recognising the heroic virtues of Daughter of Charity Sister Teresa Tambelli, an Italian who was born Maria Olga Tambelli, in 1884 and who died in 1964.

— Recognising the heroic virtues of Anna Fulgida Bartolacelli, an Italian laywoman and member of the Silent Workers of the Cross, who was born in 1928 and died in 1993.