PROFILE
new carmeliTe sainT Fr. TiTus Brandsma, ouTspoken criTic oF nazism, was killed By a leThal injecTion — and he converTed The nurse who adminisTered iT n BY ANDREW RABEL
In the round photo at upper left, Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite, journalist and manager of the Catholic press at the time of the Nazi occupation, canonized at St. Peter's during the ceremony on May 15, presided over by Pope Francis. (Grzegorz Galazka photo) Opposite page, Brandsma in the study of the Doddendaal Monastery which he founded in 1930. Bottom, with fellows of the Catholic Journalists Association in the Netherlands.
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n May 15, 2022, Pope Francis conducted 10 canonizations in Rome, in the presence of 50,000 persons. Several of these had been postponed because of the Covid outbreak in Italy. Pope Francis said, “It is good to see that, through their evangelical witness, these Saints have fostered the spiritual and social growth of their respective nations and also of the entire human family.” One of these was Dutch Carmelite friar, Fr. Titus Brandsma O.Carm., who was killed by a lethal injection in Dachau concentration camp during World War II. Anno Sjoerd Brandsma was born in Friesland in the north of the Netherlands on February 23, 1881. His family were dairy farmers. They were part of the small Catholic minority in the region. The family spoke Frisian rather than Dutch, and they were markedly religious in that five of the six Brandsma children pursued religious vocations. At the age of 11, Anno went to Franciscan minor seminary in the more Catholic South, following which he joined the Carmelite Order. Following ordination to the priesthood, he pursued further studies in philosophy at the Gregorian University in Rome, gaining a doctorate. He returned to the Netherlands to teach philosophy and do research and write. He translated the works of St. Teresa of Avila into Dutch and worked on 42
INSIDE THE VATICAN JULY-AUGUST 2022
the medieval Dutch and Flemish mystics. From 1922, he was professor of philosophy and mystical theology in the new Catholic University of Nijmegen. He was active in the Catholic press. In 1935, he came to Ireland to study English in preparation for a lecture tour of the US, and he spent time in Kinsale in County Cork and at the Carmelite church on Whitefriars St. in Dublin, the capital — home to the shrine of Our Lady of Dublin and the relics of St. Valentine. In the US, visiting Niagara Falls, one of the seven wonders of the world, he commented, “I not only see the riches of the nature of the water, its immeasurable potentiality; I see God working in the work of His hands and the manifestation of His love.” In that same year, he became secretary of the Catholic Journalists’ Association in the Netherlands. He was watching events in Germany at the time with horror as he opposed Nazism on ideological grounds. In 1940, the Netherlands was overrun by the Wehrmacht in five days. The Dutch bishops took a robust anti-Nazi stance, excommunicating Catholics who joined the Dutch Nazi NSB. Fr. Brandsma acted as a point man between the Archbishop of Utrecht, Johannes de Jong (later a Cardinal) and the Catholic press. He was very firm that Catholic editors not publish Nazi propaganda.
