Santiago Gapp (+1943)

Biography

He fought in World War I, where he was wounded and decorated. Then the Marxist utopia seduced his generous soul full of desire for justice. His mother, devastated, saw her “little one” distanced from God and the Church, and like a new Monica, she obtained his conversion from the Lord. A conversion so complete that Jakob decided to become religious. He went to the Marianists and told them: "I am a socialist and I want to be a priest. If I don't serve, tell me as soon as possible, and I'll go home." This did not scare those in charge of his training, because they saw nobility, piety and desire for truth. Little by little it was purified of ideologies but it kept what was essential: the love of truth and justice. Even his time in Marxism helped him to thoroughly understand, in the light of faith and reason, the flaws of those ideas. When the Nazis arrived in his homeland, and the Marianist schools were confiscated, Jakob had to earn a living as best he could and was accepted as a religion teacher in an official rural school. But he was soon denounced for having told his students that they had to love Jews. In December 1938, in the church of Wattens, in a resounding homily, he denounced the campaign that the Nazis waged against the Pope. There were Gestapo spies in the church and his superiors made him flee to France and from there to Spain. The Spanish civil war had ended and the Marianists, who had to get their works going again, welcomed him. He translated his name to Santiago and served as a teacher and chaplain at the schools of San Sebastián and Valencia. In Valencia, where he celebrated Sunday mass for German residents, he denounced the incompatibility of Nazism with the Christian faith and spoke clearly to them about persecution and Nazi errors. The Gestapo decided to silence that uncomfortable voice. They tricked him into France and there he was accused of treason and interrogated at length. It is said that Himmler, the supreme head of the Gestapo who received the text (30 pages) of the interrogation, exclaimed when reading them: "With a million men like Gapp, but of our ideology, we would dominate the world." On August 13, 1943, after being notified of his execution, he asked to write some letters. The one from his family was given to them, but the one he wrote to his superior was not, until the Americans occupied Berlin and seized it and published it. There he says that he considers himself a member of the Company of Mary, that he renews his vows and that he offers himself to God in the hands of our beloved Mother in Heaven. I have gone through very difficult times, he says, but now I am totally happy. The Church declared him a martyr and John Paul II beatified him in Rome on November 24, 1996, the feast of Christ the King.