Ordained priest in 1936, he was teacher in a high school (Floreffe) for a few years before being appointed curate at the parish of St Jean-Baptiste (Namur).

In 1941, with Belgium under German occupation, the parish youth center (located exactly next to the Gestapo 'Kommandantur' of Namur) became the hub of a vast clandestine organization under his leadership, aiming to save Jewish children from deportation and certain death.

Though he was occasionally suspected by the Gestapo, and several times interrogated, his center and organization were never uncovered and remained active till the end of the war.

[1] The following year the frail man, always in a black cassock, was invited to New York City by the United Jewish Appeal and greeted by more than a thousand Jews.

Hennaux, Jean-Marie: L'abbé Joseph André (1908–1973), apôtre de l'amitié judéo-chrétienne, in Pâque Nouvelle, 2001, N°2, pp.