Otto Neururer

After his ordination, Father Neururer exercised his ministry as a curate and vicar in several parishes in the Tyrol, notably in Uderns, Fiss, Kappl, and Innsbruck. From 1917 to 1932, he spent fifteen years at the Church of St. James in Innsbruck (now the cathedral), where he also taught religion. In 1932, he was appointed pastor of the Saints Peter and Paul parish in Götzens, a village located near Innsbruck. A discreet and humble man, avoiding political confrontations, he nonetheless remained a lucid and critical observer of the Nazi ideology that was beginning to spread. In March 1938, Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany (the Anschluss). Father Neururer openly expressed his love for all human beings, including Jews, thus opposing the regime's racial theses. The turning point of his life occurred in December 1938. A young girl from his parish came to consult him regarding her marriage plans with a divorced man, a fervent supporter of the Nazi party and a personal friend of the Gauleiter of Tyrol, Franz Hofer. Faithful to the Church's doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage, Father Neururer firmly advised her against this union. The young girl followed his advice and refused the marriage. In revenge, the spurned suitor denounced the priest to the Gestapo for having obstructed a "German marriage."

On December 15, 1938, Father Neururer was arrested by the Gestapo. He was initially incarcerated in the Innsbruck prison until March 3, 1939, the date on which he was deported to the Dachau concentration camp. On September 26, 1939, he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Thuringia. In the hell of the camps, the Tyrolean priest maintained his full priestly dignity. He shared his meager food rations with the weakest prisoners and continued to provide spiritual support to his companions in misery, despite the absolute prohibition of all religious practice. In the spring of 1940, while the camp authorities hinted at his imminent release and return to the Tyrol, a prisoner from Berlin approached him, claiming to want to convert to Catholicism and asking to be baptized. Despite the warnings of his companions who feared a trap, Father Neururer, moved by his duty as a pastor, agreed to give him religious instruction in secret, assisted by another Austrian priest who was also a prisoner, Father Matthias Spanlang. The request for baptism was indeed a trap set by a camp informant. Denounced, the two priests were arrested on May 28, 1940, and thrown into the camp's fearsome punishment bunker (Arrestzellenbau). Under the orders of SS officer Martin Sommer, Father Neururer was hung naked, head down, by his ankles. He endured this terrible torture without a cry, immersed in silent prayer for his executioners. After 34 hours of atrocious agony caused by the rush of blood to the brain, he died on May 30, 1940. He was the first Catholic priest to die a martyr in a Nazi concentration camp.

The reputation of holiness and martyrdom of Father Otto Neururer spread rapidly after the war. His ashes, sent by the camp authorities to Götzens in June 1940, were solemnly interred under the altar of his former parish church. The cause for beatification was officially opened after obtaining the nihil obstat from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on May 23, 1983. The diocesan inquiry took place in the Diocese of Innsbruck from November 20, 1983, to December 8, 1986. The decree validating the diocesan inquiry was published on June 14, 1991. The martyrdom in odium fidei (in hatred of the faith) was formally recognized by Pope John Paul II. On November 24, 1996, Pope John Paul II solemnly proclaimed Otto Neururer blessed in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, at the same time as the Marianist father Jakob Gapp and the French laywoman Catherine Jarrige. During his homily, the Sovereign Pontiff emphasized that the blessed had preferred death rather than to "kneel before the Beast and its image."

The spirituality of Otto Neururer is deeply rooted in absolute fidelity to the truth of the Gospel and to the sacraments, particularly that of marriage. His Marian devotion also guided his most difficult choices: Pope John Paul II recalled during the Angelus on the day of his beatification that it was precisely on the feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8, 1938) that he made the courageous decision to defend the sanctity of marriage, thereby drawing the wrath of the Nazi regime. His legacy remains alive, particularly in Austria and Germany. His relics (his ashes) are venerated in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Götzens, which has become an active place of pilgrimage. A memorial is also dedicated to him in the Cathedral of Saint James in Innsbruck. In 2019, an Austrian feature film titled Otto Neururer - Hoffnungsvolle Finsternis (Otto Neururer - A Light in the Darkness) retraced his life and martyrdom, testifying to the relevance of his message of spiritual resistance in the face of barbarism.