Catholic Heroes . . . Venerable Marcello Labor
By DEB PIROCH
“Which faith do you want from me then?” You answer me in your mysterious silence: “Faith in Jesus which makes everything possible; faith in Jesus which gives everything; faith in Jesus which wants everyone to be saved for eternity.” “Save me, then!” — Venerable Marcello Labor, Jewish convert.
Msgr. Marcello Labor, born Marcello Loewy (1890-1954), was a Jewish born Hungarian physician, writer, husband, father, widower, and priest. His process for sainthood was opened under Pope St. John Paul II in 1996 and found to be without objection. In 2015 Pope Francis declared him venerable but, perhaps because he is not well known in this country, it is difficult to find information about him.
He was a writer, but his writings are not found online easily in English. He lived in what are today different countries, and likely spoke more than one language. He kept diaries which must have had so much to say about his life, his conversion, his persecutions, and the faith. What we can share, however, as his poignant biographical history.
Marcello Labor was born Marcello Loewy in 1890 in Kanizsa, Hungary. At some stage he moved to what was then another part of the same Austro-Hungarian Empire (which dissolved later in 1918), studying medicine at the University of Vienna. He received his degree in 1914, with an interest in tuberculosis and geriatric medicine, among other areas. There he also met his wife and they had married two years before but, in 1914, the year he graduated, both converted to Catholicism two days before Christmas. World War I had begun that July.
So many unanswered questions. . . . What engendered their conversions? Perhaps one day we will have this information available from his writings in English. He was a soldier, we know, and a medic in the “Great War.” He was captured by the Russians, and released. After the end of the war, he settled in Pola, Italy — now part of Croatia — opening his medical practice. It’s clear that his life as a physician, husband, and father — he and his wife had three children together — was daily evidenced in his life and work.
Dr. Marcello Labor changed his name at some stage, influenced by his father, who felt that he would sound more Italian and that his Jewish ethnicity could work against him. Dr. Labor was involved in helping the poor, and especially dedicated to Adoration of the Eucharist, even founding a Catholic Center to this purpose. Always busy writing and corresponding, he authored over 200 articles and wrote back and forth with various writers of the day. He was also part of Catholic Action, which was not one particular organization but an umbrella name for various ones endorsed by the churchmen.
At this stage, he regrettably had sympathies with the socialist movement, and some say that this was reportedly another reason for the choice of “Labor” as his last name. In the absence of more data, one can only postulate that if so, this was perhaps because of his sympathy in helping the poor. One must also reference that Europe had not yet experienced World War II with Hitler’s rise to power, nor postwar Europe, and the rise of Communism with its great suffering.
Come 1934, after twenty years of marriage, his wife passed away suddenly after an illness. Now a widower, with two grown children (one had passed away in infancy), he became a Third Order Franciscan and began contemplating a vocation for the priesthood. Gaining permission, he first approached the Salesians but he was turned away.
As a result, he chose to become a diocesan priest and, after studying, was ordained at the cathedral in Trieste, Italy, in 1940. Trieste had also been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but was joined to Italy at the end of the First World War. World War II had now begun, but Italy had not yet joined the fray.
At the time, he was the pastor of San Giusto Cathedral, the rector at two seminaries, Koper and Trieste, and the spiritual director for a third. Then, come 1943, things changed with the war. He was doubly exiled by the fascists, both for being a Jew and for being a Catholic priest. He was still able to work for a parish in Venice during this exile, named Fossalta di Portogruaro, the region giving way to Allied forces.
What is unclear is where he was next located when the exile came to an end with the war. Perhaps he returned to Pola, where he had once lived and practiced medicine. In any case, his biographers state that in 1947 he was sentenced to imprisonment by the government of Josef Tito, under the Croatian Communists, again for being a Catholic priest. Having experienced both wings of socialism, fascists and Communists, he would have discovered, like Pope St. John Paul II, that the Church is the only true Mother and sanctuary. Though sentenced to a year of imprisonment, he was released early.
Now Msgr. Labor, he had a heart attack on September 29, 1954, diagnosing himself. He ended up passing away. Oddly, perhaps out of humility, he asked that he be buried only in his cassock, without a vestment or even a biretta, with only the words, “Former Parish Priest off San Giusto.” It is the habit of some religious, for instance, to be buried with a cross and no name at all, since in the end we are only remembered in the eyes of God. “Dust to dust. . . .”
Today we again witness the alarming ascendance of the false promises of socialism. As previous Popes have affirmed over and over, including Pope St. John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, socialism goes hand-in-hand with authoritarianism, atheism, and denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person.
Let us pray to Pope St. John Paul II and Venerable Labor that all may find Christ in every human face and love his neighbor like himself:
“Love for others, and in the first place love for the poor, in whom the Church sees Christ Himself, is made concrete in the promotion of justice. Justice will never be fully attained unless people see in the poor person, who is asking for help in order to survive, not an annoyance or a burden, but an opportunity for showing kindness and a chance for greater enrichment. . . . Therefore, in order that the demands of justice may be met, and attempts to achieve this goal may succeed, what is needed is the gift of grace, a gift which comes from God. Grace, in cooperation with human freedom, constitutes that mysterious presence of God in history which is Providence” — Centesimus Annus, John Paul II.
