Odoardo Focherini
Italian resistance fighter (1907-1944)
Feast: 6 June (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Odoardo Focherini was born at Carpi on 6 June 1907 and from youth was active in Catholic Action, as an educator and later diocesan president. A husband and father and a journalist, he saved many Jews from Nazi persecution.
Arrested, he was killed in hatred of the faith in the German concentration camp of Hersbruck in 1944, aged only 37. Benedict XVI recognised his death as true martyrdom on 10 May 2012.
The miracles
As a martyr he was beatified, at Carpi, without a miracle. He was the first Italian journalist beatified.
Why that counted as sanctity
A journalist and father who saved Jews and died a martyr in a Nazi camp.
The cause
Odoardo Focherini has been beatified; the cause continues. Favours received, and offers of help, go to the postulation, the office that carries the cause forward: Diocese of Carpi: Blessed Odoardo Focherini.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography: Odoardo Focherini
- Wikidata Q3880942 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Odoardo Focherini (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.