Born 26 July 1897 – Died 13 August
1943 by guillotine
Blessed Gapp was the seventh child in
a working class family and received a
basic education in his native town at
Wattens, Austrian Tirol, and then
entered the Franciscan high school in
1910. He was an Austrian soldier on
the Italian front from May 1915 until he
was wounded in 1916 and received the
silver medal of Courage Second Class.
On 4 November 1918 he became a prisoner of war in Riva
del Garda; released 18 August 1919.
He entered the Marianist novitiate at Greisinghof, Upper
Austria in 1921 and was assigned to the Marian Institute in
Graz as a teacher and sacristan for four years, while
preparing for the seminary. He was ordained by Bishop
Marius Besson at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Fribourg on 5
April 1930.
Back in Austria he worked as a teacher, director of religious
education, and chaplain in Marianist schools until 1938.
Economic conditions were terrible; Father Gapp collected
food and other necessities from students and gave his own
heating coal to the poor.
Nazism was on the rise in Germany and Austria. Father
Gapp saw the incompatibility of Nazism and Christianity,
and began preaching this truth. When German troops
arrived in Austria in March 1938, he left Graz. His
superiors sent him home, as they believed his anti-Nazi
preaching would bring on the wrath of the Reich; but those
institutions were already marked for destruction.
In Tirol he was an assistant pastor in Breitenwang-Reutte
for two months when the Gestapo, in October 1938,
ordered him not to teach religion. Fr. Gapp taught
uncompromising love for all men and women without
reference to nationality or religion, and that “God is your
God, not Adolf Hitler.” In a sermon on 11 December 1938
he defended Pope Pius XI against the attacks of the Nazis,
and directed the faithful of the parish to read Catholic
literature instead of Nazi propaganda. He was advised to
leave the country.
He escaped to Bordeaux, France, where he worked as a
chaplain and librarian. In May 1939 he went to Spain
where he served in the Marianist communities at San
Sebastian, Cadiz and Valencia. The Gestapo had followed
him, and in 1942 he received word of two people across
the border in France who claimed to be Jews fleeing from
Nazis in Berlin, and who wanted instruction in Catholism.
When he crossed into France they abducted him.
Father Gapp was arrested on 9 November 1942 in
Hendaye, France, and brought to Berlin. On 2 July 1943
he was condemned to death for speaking against the
Reich. Burial of his remains was denied, as the Nazis
feared he would be seen as a martyr, and his grave
become a site of silent demonstration and rebellion.
Guillotined at 7:08 p.m. 13 August 1943 at Plotzensee
Prison, Berlin, Germany; remains used for research at the
Anatomical-Biological Institute of the University of Berlin.
“Action is more important than theory!” – Father Gapp