After serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I, Jakob was ordained a Marianist priest in 1930. As the Nazis spread their hate-filled and racist ideology throughout Europe, Fr. Jakob remained firm in his conviction that National Socialism and Christianity were incompatible.
The Gestapo began surveilling Fr. Gapp in 1938 for teaching his students to love their neighbors, “even Czechs, Frenchmen, Jews, and Communists,” and that “not Adolf Hitler, but God alone is their God.”1 His anti-Nazi teachings and ministry forced him to flee from Austria. While in France and Spain, the Gestapo continued sending secret agents to watch Fr. Gapp. While on a trip to Northern Spain, two undercover Gestapo spies lured Fr. Gapp across the French border. He was arrested on November 9, 1942. He was accused of “having continually been guilty of aiding the enemy until 1942 as a German in foreign countries,”2 and he was beheaded in Berlin’s Plötzensee Prison on August 13, 1943. Pope John Paul II beatified Fr. Gapp on November 24, 1996.
To learn more about Blessed Jakob Gapp, we suggest Blessed Jakob Gapp, Marianist by Josef Levit, SM, as well as other resources available on our NACMS website and online bookstore.
1. Josef Levit, SM, Blessed Jakob Gapp, Marianist (Dayton, OH: NACMS, 1998), 72.
2. Levit, Blessed Jakob Gapp, 99.
Published in the August 2024 NACMS Newsletter