Blessed Franz Jägerstätter

Franz Jägerstätter, TOSF (also spelled Jaegerstaetter in English; born Franz Huber, 20 May 1907 – 9 August 1943) was an Austrian farmer and conscientious objector during World War II. Jägerstätter was sentenced to death and executed for his refusal to fight for Nazi Germany. He is venerated as a martyr and has been beatified by the Catholic Church. Jägerstätter's mother was an unmarried chambermaid named Rosalia Huber who lived in Sankt Radegund, Upper Austria, a small village between Salzburg and Braunau am Inn where nearly everyone was Catholic. His father was Franz Bachmeier from Tarsdorf, the unmarried son of a farmer. He was born on 20 May 1907 in Huber's parents' home, and baptised in the parish church the next day under the name of St Francis Caracciolo. As his parents could not afford a marriage, Franz was first cared for by his grandmother, Elisabeth Huber, who had a reputation as an exceptionally devout woman. His biological father was killed in World War I in 1915, when Franz was seven or eight years old. In 1917, his mother married Heinrich Jägerstätter. As the marriage didn't result in children of Jägerstätter's own, he adopted his wife's son and gave over the farm to him after Franz married in 1936. As a boy, Franz was a better than average student and an avid reader, apparently leaving school after his 14th birthday, as permitted by law. His fellow villagers remembered the Franz of early manhood fondly as "a jolly, robust, fun-loving, hot-blooded, 'he-man' type", intelligent and "bull-headed", who tended to be "ahead of the crowd" in his interests and to wish to be the first to try something new; he was the first in his village to own a motorcycle. While he regularly went to Mass, there was little to foreshadow the devotion he was known for in later years, and he once embarrassed the pastor of the village by asking him about the possibility that the Virgin Mary had other children after Jesus.