Marcello Labor, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetMarcello Labor
Italian writer and physician
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Trieste, Friuli–Venezia Giulia
About Marcello Labor
- Marcello Labor (8 July 1890 – 29 September 1954) – born Marcello Loewy – was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and former doctor.
- Labor was born to Jewish parents and was Jewish himself until his conversion to Roman Catholicism on 23 December 1914.
- He married Elsa Reiss in 1912 after the pair met at college in Austria and had three children together during the course of World War I.
- It was during that conflict that he served as a medical officer and was once a Russian captive until his release a short time later.
- He opened a medical practice in Pula in Croatia where he dedicated himself to the poor as well as to a range of different social issues and collaborated with Catholic Action in the region.
- He even changed his last name at the behest of his father in order to make him seem more Italianized.He was a lover of literature and published around 200 articles in various newspapers and magazines.
- The sudden death of his wife in 1934 left him alone since his children were adults.
- This prompted him to join the priesthood and he was ordained as such in 1940 after the Salesians of Don Bosco rejected his application to join their religious congregation.
- He served as a noted preacher and spiritual director and served a Fascist exile towards the end of World War II.
- His Jewish origins and his status as a priest saw Josip Broz Tito and his communists imprison him for several months.Labor died from a heart attack in late 1954 as he himself predicted.
- His cause for canonization was launched some decades after and culminated on 5 June 2015 after Pope Francis confirmed his life of heroic virtue and named him as Venerable.
Read more at Wikipedia