On Friday, the 20th June, Pope Leo XIV approved the recognition of the martyrdom of a group of Friars Minor, including Friar Louis Paraire, who died on the 26th April, 1945 on the infernal death train. It is the recognition of a witness that crossed the abyss of Nazi evil to emerge as a light of Christian fraternity.
The story that the Church honours today was told by Eloi Leclerc, a friar minor who survived the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau. During the transport on an open-top train that traveled from Buchenwald to Dachau for 28 days, something miraculous happened: some friars, taken by supernatural grace, began to sing the Canticle of the Creatures of St. Francis in almost imperceptible voices.
Amongst those dying friars was Friar Louis Paraire, whose death is now recognized as martyrdom. Above all, there was Eloi Leclerc who, having survived, bore witness throughout his life to that "certain hope" that sustained them in the darkness. His testimony lives on in the famous "The wisdom of a poor man".
If there was a certain hope in that hell, then everything changes. The testimony of these friars shows that not even the Nazi death machine could extinguish the song of creation. As Leclerc wrote: "in the middle of hell something burst in from heaven".
The temporal coincidence makes this recognition providential: we are in the centenary of the Canticle of the Creatures - the same canticle that resounded between the sheets of the train of death - and in the Jubilee of Hope. Is it not a sign that God also writes history through coincidences?
Leclerc's experience proved decisive for the rediscovery of Franciscan sources. It is shown that he was an important piece for the drafting of Franciscan sources in French and from there in other languages. Extreme suffering, instead of destroying the Franciscan spiritual tradition, purified and revived it.
What is the value for us today? In a world that is plunging towards new barbarities - wars, persecutions, slavery - the testimony of Brother Louis Paraire and the other martyrs reminds us that Christian hope is not vague optimism, but certainty based on Christ's victory over death.
When they sang the Canticle in that sealed wagon, they were not doing spiritual aesthetics but were performing an act of evangelical resistance to evil. They affirmed that "all creatures" - even those suffering, in agony - participate in the beauty of God and no ideology of death can erase this truth.
In the Jubilee of Hope, Br Louis Paraire and his companions become intercessors for all those who - there are many even today - are going through insurmountable trials. Their witness assures us that, even in the darkest moments, Christian hope remains "certain and reliable". Because it is founded on the fidelity of God who never abandons his children, not even on death trains.
The particular grace of this recognition reminds us that Christianity is not an easy philosophy, but a resurrection force that resists evil and that no earthly power will ever be able to extinguish definitively.
