The “offer of life” is a term used to describe the voluntary sacrifice of one’s life in the name of Christian charity. In 2017, the Catholic Church introduced the offer of life as a new case for canonisation, adding it to the two traditional main cases, i.e. martyrdom and the “heroicity” of virtues. In the context of the post-conciliar Catholic Church’s efforts to adapt to the challenges of today’s world, the new case is intended to broaden the concept of holiness and to capture exemplary behaviours that respond to contemporary problems for human society, among which is war. Two of the first causes to involve offer of life concern soldiers: the American military chaplain Father Emil Joseph Kapaun and the Italian carabiniere Salvo D’Acquisto, who embody both civil and religious values. The article analyses how the religious and civil roles relate to each other in their respective cultures. After a brief overview of the case of the “offer of life”, it provides examples of how institutional sources comment on these figures before turning to a selection of media representations. Drawing on the semiotic notion of “thematization”, it provides a semiotic analysis of an episode of a US television series about Father Kapaun and a television series and a film about Salvo D’Acquisto.