Featured Stories | September 28, 2026
“Few of us will be asked for our blood but all of us are asked for the daily offering…
Blessed Martino, Elia, and Ubaldo, pray for us.”
Fr. Francis Vu Tran, SCJ
On Sunday, September 27, Dehonian Father Martino Capelli was beatified at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, Italy, along with Salesian Fr. Elia Comini and diocesan priest Fr. Ubaldo Marchioni. The three were martyred in 1944 in the Monte Sole massacres, which took place near the site of the beatification.
Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, presided over the celebration on behalf of the Holy Father. He was joined by 150 concelebrants, among them: Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Archbishop Antonio Sozzo, Apostolic Nuncio Emeritus, Fr. Carlos Luis Suárez, SCJ superior general, Don Fabio Attard, Rector Major of the Salesian Society, and dozens of SCJ priests from around the world.
Fr. Francis Vu Tran, SCJ, represented the US Province. “The Pope called them [the three to be beatified] ‘pastores et boni Samaritani,’ shepherds and Good Samaritans who shared the sufferings of their flock ‘even to the shedding of blood.'” wrote Fr. Francis. “When their image was unveiled and the relics carried forward, the whole basilica rose to its feet. For those of us who share Fr. Dehon’s charism, one of our own had just been raised to the altars.”
The following are Fr. Francis’ full reflections on the Saturday vigil and the beatification Mass.
Click here to view photos and videos from the beatification weekend posted on the general Facebook page (DehoniansWorldwide).
Before This Love: The Red Thread of Total Gift
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2026 – On the eve of the beatification, I sat in the Church of the Sacred Heart in Bologna before a long wooden board laid down the sanctuary steps. At first it held only a red cross outlined in light, studded with bare nails. By the end of the evening, a red cord had been wound from nail to nail until the figure of the crucified Christ appeared. Above it, three young priests looked out at us: Don Ubaldo Marchioni, Don Elia Comini, SDB, and our Dehonian brother, Fr. Martino Capelli. The theme was “Davanti a questo amore”: the red thread of total gift.
The vigil was built on John 10. As a scripture professor, I was struck by how honestly it read that chapter. It began not with the shepherd but with the thief who comes “to steal, kill, and destroy,” and with Cain in the field, and God’s question: “Where is your brother?” The litany that followed would not let us point at the Nazis alone. We steal time and attention through indifference and haste. We kill with sharp tongues and glances that refuse to see the other. We destroy through waste and greed. Kyrie eleison. Monte Sole begins in the human heart.
Then came the shepherd who lays down his life, and three faces of that one shepherd. Ubaldo, the young diocesan pastor who would not leave his wounded people when the wolf came, pierced like the pyx of the Eucharist he guarded. Elia, the Salesian who knew his flock by name, partisans and German soldiers alike, and left behind nothing but a diary of his trust in God. And Martino, who at 19, on the feast of Guadalupe in 1931, wrote with a steady hand: “O Virgin, Queen of the Mexican martyrs, grant that one day I too may be a martyr of Christ the King…” The booklet called his life ‘preghiera e offerta,’ prayer and offering, like that of Jesus, and fruitful.
The vigil’s summit was John 19:34, the verse on the beatification logo: “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out.” For us who live the spirituality of Fr. Dehon, this is home ground. Everything flows from a pierced heart. Like the river of Ezekiel 47 flowing from the sanctuary, whose fruit is food and whose leaves are medicine, what flowed from Monte Sole was not only blood but healing. Three vocations, three spiritualities, one Church born from one wounded side.
Most challenging was the prayer for persecutors, “past and present.” The martyrs’ courage, the booklet insisted, has no taste of heroism, only the taste of gift. That is why we prayed for the grace to forgive enemies before praying for vocations.
Few of us will be asked for our blood but all of us are asked for the daily offering. The nails were already on that board. It was the thread, passed patiently from one to the next, that revealed the face of Christ.
Blessed Martino, Elia, and Ubaldo, pray for us.
“I Come to Be a Priest, and That Is Enough for Me”
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2026 -This afternoon in San Petronio, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro read the apostolic letter of Pope Leo XIV, and three priests of Monte Sole were declared Blessed: Ubaldo Marchioni, Elia Comini, and our Dehonian brother, Martino Capelli. The Pope called them “pastores et boni Samaritani,” shepherds and Good Samaritans who shared the sufferings of their flock “even to the shedding of blood.” When their image was unveiled and the relics carried forward, the whole basilica rose to its feet. For those of us who share Fr. Dehon’s charism, one of our own had just been raised to the altars.
At 12, young Nicola Capelli arrived at the Dehonian school in Albino and said simply, “I come to be a priest, and that is enough for me.” That sentence is his whole life in miniature. As a religious he took the name Martino Maria dell’Addolorata. At 19 he asked Our Lady of Guadalupe for the grace of martyrdom. He dreamed of the missions in China, in Yunnan. Instead, his superiors sent him to study at the Biblical Institute in Rome and then to teach. As a professor of Scripture, I feel a quiet kinship with this young man who had to trade the mission field for the classroom and trust that God knew what he was doing.
Today’s Gospel fit him perfectly. In Matthew 21, a father asks two sons to work in his vineyard. One says yes and does not go. The other hesitates, then goes. Martino said yes and went, though not to the vineyard he had imagined. God’s vineyard turned out to be the small parish of Salvaro in the summer of 1944, where he formed a deep priestly friendship with Don Elia Comini. On September 29, when word came of a massacre at nearby Creda, the two priests ran toward the dying to bring them the last comforts of faith. They were arrested by the SS, humiliated, and on October 1 shot at the hemp works of Pioppe di Salvaro and finished off with grenades.
The booklet records his last moments: he cried out “Perdono,” forgiveness, and as he was dying he traced a great sign of the cross over the brothers dying around him. His final priestly act was a blessing. This is the “mind of Christ” that St. Paul described in today’s second reading (Phil 2:1–11): the One who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, obedient unto death, even death on a cross. The hymn to the new Blessed said it well: at the altar, where Christ teaches, they learned to offer their lives together with the Lamb.
That forgiveness bore fruit. In 1967, Ubaldo’s father, Augusto Marchioni, was one of the few relatives willing to forgive the SS officer who commanded the massacre. The blood of Monte Sole did not cry out for vengeance. It became, as today’s prayer card says, a seed of reconciliation, peace, and hope.
Martino’s martyrdom did not begin on October 1, 1944. It began each day he said “questo mi basta,” this is enough, and let God decide the rest. That is the witness he leaves to seminarians, to priests, and to all of us: fidelity in the vineyard we are given, and a heart ready to bless even in the hour of death.
Blessed Martino Capelli, SCJ, pray for us.
PHOTOS and VIDEOS are on the general Facebook page, DehoniansWorldwide
