From 20 July 1944 Fr Elia Comini shared a priestly fraternity with Fr Martino Capelli, guests of Bishop Fidenzio Mellini in Salvaro, helping out in pastoral ministry. Bishop Mellini's presbytery became what Bishop Luciano Gherardi later called "the community of the ark", a place that welcomes to save. Father Capelli was fired up when he had heard about the Mexican martyrs and wished to be a missionary in China. Father Comini, from a young age, was haunted by a strange awareness of "having to die" and already at the age of 17 he had written: "The thought that I must die always persists in me! – Who knows?! We act like the faithful servant: always prepared for the call, to reddere rationem of management".

On the morning of 29 September 1944, Father Comino rushed with Father Capelli to Creda, a town where the SS of the 16th Armored Division had just perpetrated a massacre: their stole, holy oils and case with some Eucharistic particles clearly identified them as priests as they carried out their ministry of comfort of the dying. Captured, stripped of their priestly insignia, used as a "beast of burden" to carry ammunition, Father Comini and Father Capelli experienced an intense passion that day, most likely forced to witness the "most gruesome violence". Brought to the "house of the birocciai" in Pioppe di Salvaro by night, they spent two intense days, convinced from the beginning that they were destined to die and yet close to the prisoners, always ready to comfort, help, and absolve. The different mediations used to try to save them failed.

On the evening of 1 October 1944, they were killed with a group of "disabled" near the canapiera – a water tank at that time almost dry and muddy – in Pioppe di Salvaro, at the end of a surreal liturgy in which the SS had paraded the prisoners on a catwalk before mowing them down with machine guns: Father Comini, intoning the Litany and finally shouting "Mercy!", had transformed it into a prayerful advance towards Heaven. Shortly before death, a German violently struck Father Comini's hands and his breviary fell between the bodies. Father Capelli instead called out "Forgiveness",standing with difficulty among his dead or dying companions, and tracing the sign of the Cross a few moments before dying due to a huge wound.

In the following days, due to the torrential rains, and given the impossibility of recovering the already decomposing corpses, the grills were subsequently opened and the impetuous current of the Rhine carried the poor remains, already consumed and become "earth", away forever.

In September 1977 in Salvaro, Bishop Benito Cocchi  said: "So here before the Lord we say that our preference goes to these gestures, to these people, to those who pay with their life: to those who at a time when only weapons, force and violence were worth something, when a house, the life of a child, an entire family were valued as nothing, knew how to carry out gestures that have no voice in war budgets, but which are true treasures of humanity, resistance and an alternative to violence; to those who in this way put down roots for a more humane society and coexistence." Understood thus, "the martyrdom of priests is the result of their conscious choice to share the fate of the flock to the point of extreme sacrifice, when the efforts of mediation between the population and the occupiers, long pursued, lost all chance of success".

In this special year, two fundamental steps for the process of martyrdom will be held: on 10 December the Ordinary Session of the Cardinals and Bishops for the Cause of Fr Elia Comini will take place; on 12 December  the Congress of the Theological Consultants for the Cause of Fr Martino Capelli.

• Fr. Martino Capelli Fr. Martino Capelli
• Fr. Elia Comini Fr. Elia Comini
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