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Blessed Josef Mayr-Nusser

Blessed Josef Mayr-Nusser Also known as

Pepi (nickname)
Martyr of the First Commandment

24 February
3 October on some calendars

Profile

Raised in a pious, rural Italian farm family; his brother Jakob became a priest. Devotee of Blessed Antoine-Frédéric Ozanam and Saint Vincent de Paul. To follow their example, he joined the Saint Vincent de Paul Society in 1932, and by 1937 was the president of the Bolzano, Italy division. In addition to directly caring for the poor, he became a vocal spokesman for them. A member of Catholic Action, in 1934 he became the head of the organization in the diocese of Trent, Italy. Student of the writing of Saint Thomas More and Saint Thomas Aquinas, concentrating on their correspondence as he thought that letters would reveal the real men themselves. He joined the covert anti–Nazi group Andreas Hofer Bund in 1939. Married to Hildegard Straub on 26 May 1942; their son Alberto was born in 1943.

Drafted into the German army in World War II, assigned to an SS unit in 1944, and sent to Prussia for training. On 4 October 1944 he announced that his faith prevented him from taking the oath of loyalty and obedience to Hitler, or of cooperating with the anti–Christian Nazi ideology. Imprisoned for his belief, Josef was sentenced in February 1945 to be executed in the Dachau concentration camp, he died while en route there. Martyr.

Born

27 December 1910 in Bolzano, Italy

Died

morning of 24 February 1945 in Erlangen, Germany of dysentery on a train en route to the Dachau concentration camp to be executed by firing squad
re-buried at the church of San Giuseppe in Bolzano, Italy in 1958