Odoardo Focherini

The work of Odoardo Focherini is centered around his ecclesial commitment, his activity as a journalist, and his heroic action in rescuing Jews during the Second World War. As early as 1924, at the age of 17, he co-founded with Zeno Saltini (future priest and founder of the Nomadelfia community) the children's newspaper L'Aspirante, which would become a reference national publication. He also collaborated with other Catholic journals and became a correspondent for L'Osservatore Romano and the Bolognese daily L'Avvenire d'Italia. In 1939, he was appointed managing director (consigliere mandatario) of the latter newspaper, which he managed with rigor and fidelity to Christian values, despite pressure from the Fascist regime. At the same time, he assumed important responsibilities within Catholic Action, becoming its diocesan president in Carpi in 1936. From 1942, his commitment took on a dramatic dimension. Solicited by the director of L'Avvenire d'Italia, Raimondo Manzini—himself contacted by Cardinal Pietro Boetto, Archbishop of Genoa—Focherini organized the rescue of Polish Jews who had arrived in Italy. After the armistice of September 8, 1943, and the German occupation, the danger increased. Focherini, supported by his wife Maria who fully shared his choice, joined forces with Father Dante Sala, parish priest of San Martino Spino. Together, they set up a highly effective clandestine network. Thanks to forged identity papers and escape routes, they managed to help more than one hundred Jews (exactly 105) cross into Switzerland. On March 11, 1944, Odoardo Focherini was arrested by the Fascist authorities at the Carpi hospital, while he was organizing the escape of Enrico Donati, the last Jew he would manage to save.

After his arrest, Focherini began a long Way of the Cross through prisons and concentration camps. He was first incarcerated at the San Giovanni in Monte prison in Bologna from March 13 to July 5, 1944. It was there that he confided to his brother-in-law Bruno Marchesi, who asked him about any regrets: "If you had seen, as I have seen in this prison, what they make the Jews suffer, you would only regret not having saved a greater number." On July 5, 1944, he was transferred to the Fossoli camp, then on August 4 to the Gries transit camp in Bolzano. On September 5, 1944, he was deported to the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Germany, before being sent to the Hersbruck sub-camp. During these nine months of captivity, he managed to send 166 letters and notes to his family, poignant testimonies of love, serenity, and unwavering faith. At Hersbruck, subjected to forced labor, he contracted a serious infection in his leg that degenerated into sepsis. He died on December 27, 1944, at the age of 37. He was assisted in his final moments by his friend Teresio Olivelli (himself beatified in 2018), who would convey his last words: "I declare that I die in the purest Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman faith and in full submission to the will of God, offering my life as a holocaust for my diocese, for Catholic Action, for the Pope, and for the return of peace to the world."

The recognition of Odoardo Focherini's heroism was first civil. In 1955, the Jewish community of Milan awarded him a gold medal. In 1969, the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem declared him a "Righteous Among the Nations." In 2007, the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, posthumously awarded him the Gold Medal for Civil Merit. The beatification process opened at the diocesan level in 1996 and closed in 1998, at which time the cause was transmitted to Rome. On May 10, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI signed the decree recognizing his martyrdom in odium fidei (in hatred of the faith), which dispenses with the requirement of a miracle. The beatification ceremony was celebrated on June 15, 2013, in the Piazza Martiri in Carpi (the cathedral being inaccessible at the time due to an earthquake). It was presided over, in the name of Pope Francis, by Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Odoardo Focherini thus became the first Italian journalist to be beatified.

The spirituality of Odoardo Focherini is that of an engaged layman, deeply rooted in daily prayer, the frequenting of the sacraments, and love for the Church. His humanitarian action was not a simple philanthropic endeavor, but the direct fruit of his Christian faith and his fidelity to the Gospel. For him, helping the persecuted was a duty of absolute Christian charity, summarized by his famous phrase written in a letter intercepted by the Nazis: he helped the Jews "not out of interest, but out of pure Christian charity." His legacy remains alive, particularly in Carpi and throughout Italy, as a model of civic courage and lay holiness. He shows how a father and a press professional knew how, at the risk of his life, to embody truth and charity in the face of totalitarian barbarism.