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. Source: Wikipedia (en)