Heroic police officer met his fiancée thanks to the Virgin Mary

The police officer who died after taking the place of a hostage in France was a practicing Catholic who had “experienced a genuine conversion” around 2008.

Colonel Arnaud Beltrame died on March 24, 2018 after volunteering to replace a female hostage during a terrorist attack on the “Super U” supermarket in Trèbes, southern France, on Friday. …

Father Dominique Arz, national chaplain of the gendarmerie, told the French Catholic magazine Famille Chrétienne: “It turns out that the colonel was a practicing Catholic. The fact is that he did not hide his faith, and that he radiated it, he bore witness to it. We can say that his act of self-offering is consistent with what he believed. He served his country to the very end, and bore witness to his faith to the very end.” …

Beltrame and his fiancée, Marielle, were preparing to receive the sacrament of marriage, according to Father Jean-Baptiste, one of the Canons Regular of the Mother of God of Lagrasse Abbey. Father Jean-Baptiste said in a statement: “It was through a chance meeting during a visit to our abbey…This young couple regularly came to the abbey to participate in masses, services and teachings, especially to participate in meetings for couples called Notre Dame de Cana. After a pilgrimage to Sainte-Anne-d’Auray in 2015, where he asked the Virgin Mary to help him to meet the woman of his life, he met Marielle, whose faith is deep and discreet. The engagement was celebrated at the Breton abbey of Timadeuc on Easter 2016.

 “I was able to give him the Sacrament of the Sick and the apostolic blessing at the moment of death… It was the Friday before the Passion, just before the opening of Holy Week. I had just prayed the Midafternoon Prayer and the Stations of the Cross for him. I asked the caregiver if he could have near him a Marian medal, that of the rue du Bac in Paris.”

Catholic Herald