Franz told others that the war was being waged by "bad men," playing a "crooked game." He added "I cannot play the game. The game is a lie." He wrote about the referendum " I believe that there could scarcely be a sadder hour for the true Christian faith in our country than this hour when one watches in silence while this error spreads its ever-widening influence." He compared the day of the referendum to the day of Christ's Passion when the crowd was given a free choice between the innocent Savior and the criminal Barabbas, and the crowd chose Barabbas.
In the days that followed, Franz stopped attending social occasions to avoid getting into any other heated arguments with those who defended the Nazis and their take-over of his beloved homeland. When a storm destroyed his crops, he refused assistance from Germany. He knew men his age were being conscripted into the army of the Third Reich; he was tormented by the traumatic choice that he knew would soon be confronting him.
What caused a simple farmer to become a courageous vocal opponent of an oppressive regime? Franz's early life gave no indication of the courageous man he would become. Franz was an illegitimate child, but was later adopted by his kind step-father. As a youth he was rather wild, but no wilder than the other peasant youths of his area. He worked as a farm hand and miner, and was the proud owner of the first motorcycle in his village. At the age of twenty-five, he fathered an illegitimate daughter.
His life began to change when he married the love of his life, Franziska, a deeply religious woman. They traveled to Rome for a honeymoon and received a Papal blessing. Franz' deep spiritual awakening began. He read the Bible and the lives of the saints, prayed, fasted, gave alms to the poor. He became sacristan at their village Church. He learned about the Catholic Church's teachings about unjust wars. By the time the Nazis invaded Austria, Franz was a man who had chosen to make God and God's commands the center of his life.
Finally the dreaded day came, and Franz was conscripted into the German army and completed basic training. Home in 1941, under an exemption as a farmer, he feared getting called into battle and met with different priests to discuss the morality of the war. They told him that God would surely understand if he fought for the Nazis; his greatest responsibility was to his wife and children. He talked to his Bishop, who refused to comment. Franz was saddened, knowing that the Bishop feared to speak openly against the Nazi regime to him because he feared Franz was a spy. Only his wife supported him.
Franz was called into active duty in 1943, when his oldest daughter was not quite six. He refused to fight for the Third Reich and declared himself to be a selective conscientious objector to an unjust war. ( Franz' diary and letters indicate that if Austria had fought against the Nazis, Franz would have fought in the Austrian army.) He offered to be a paramedic; his offer was ignored. Franz was imprisoned at Linz, knowing he could lose his life any day. Family members and friends and clergy visited him, pleading with him to change his mind and serve. His mother sent relatives to him, begging him to fight for the Nazis to save his life for his family. (Once again, his wife stood by him because, as she said later, otherwise her beloved husband would have had no one else beside him.)
He refused them all. He believed that Christians were called to meet the highest possible standards, that people were called in every age to be heroes and saints and martyrs, that he remembered the Passion of Jesus and his anguished cry to the Father to take away his cup of suffering, but that, like Christ, Franz too must say to the Father "Thy will be done."
Anguished, fighting temptations to compromise his conscience in order to be with his family again, he wrote his final letters. To his wife and children: "I will surely beg the dear God, that if I am permitted to enter heaven soon, that He may set aside a little place in heaven for all of you." To his daughters: "I greet you, my dear little girls. May the child Jesus and the dear Mother of heaven protect you until we see one another again."
Accused of undermining military morale, Franz Jagerstatter underwent a military trial, during which he defended his position eloquently, to no avail. He was sentenced to death on July 6, 1943, and beheaded on August 9, 1943. He was only thirty-six. Calm and composed, he spoke to the chaplain as he was led to his death; "I am completely bound in inner union to the Lord." The prison chaplain said later "I can say with certainty that this simple man is the only saint I have met in my lifetime."
Franz Jagerstatter had run the good race, fought the good fight. For him, it was better to die for Christ than to scandalize his faith and his family by allying himself with evil and participating in the Nazi Death Machine. Some of his last words reveal how Christlike he became in his ability to forgive his murderers:
"Let us love our enemies, bless them who curse us, pray for those who persecute us. For love will conquer and will endure for all eternity. Happy are they who will live and die in God's love."
Pope Benedict the Sixteenth declared the simple, ordinary farmer and young father Franz Jagerstatter an official martyr of the Church. One day soon, his Church (which he supported in spite of his disappointment that its leaders did not speak out more openly) will publicly declare that because of his holiness and the power of the witness of his ordinary life, Franz is a saint, standing glorious beside his Crucified Lord in Heaven.
May the witness of Franz Jagerstatter inflame our hearts and our will to always conquer fear and speak out for the Truth in Jesus' Name.