Blessed Titus Brandsma (Bolsward, February 23, 1881 – Dachau July 26, 1942) was a Dutch Carmelite priest and philosophy professor. Brandsma opposed Nazi ideology and antisemitism speaking out against both many times before the World War II.
Blessed Brandsma was born at Bolsward, Netherlands in 1881. He was baptized Anno Sjoerd Brandsma. He joined the Carmelites on September 17, 1898, and took the religious name Titus. Brandsma was ordained a priest in 1905
He was a student of Carmelite mysticism and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy at Rome in 1909. Among his many academic accomplishments was a translation of the works of St. Teresa of Ávila into Dutch.
One of the founders of the Catholic University of Nijmegen (now called Radboud University), Brandsma became a professor of philosophy and the history of mysticism at the university in 1923. He later served as Rector Magnificus for the school. He was known for making himself available to any student or professor who needed his assistance.
Fr. Brandsma also worked as a journalist and, in 1935, become the ecclesiastical adviser to Catholic journalists. He came to the attention of the Nazis when he wrote vehemently against the spread of Nazi ideology and for his support of educational and press freedom.
He was arrested in January, 1942, while trying to persuade Dutch Catholic newspapers not to print Nazi propaganda (as was required by law of the Nazi German occupiers). He had also drawn up a Pastoral Letter read in all Catholic parishes, by which the Dutch Roman Catholic bishops officially condemned the German anti-Semitic measures and the deportation of the first Jews. In the Pastoral Letter, the Dutch Bishops also outlined Nazism as incompatible with Catholicism in its core ideology.
After this Pastoral Letter, the first 3,000 Jews to be deported from the Netherlands were all Jewish converts to Roman Catholicism. Brandsma was transferred in February, 1942 to Dachau concentration camp on June 13, after being held prisoner in Scheveningen, Amersfoort and Cleves.
He died on July 26, 1942, by a lethal injection administered by an Allgemeine SS doctor to whom Brandsma gave his rosary.
Titus Brandsma is honored as a martyr in the Catholic Church. He was beatified in November 1985 by Pope John Paul II. His Feast Day is 27 July. His patronage includes journalists, tobacconists and Friesland, his homeland.
In 2005, Brandsma was chosen by the inhabitants of Nijmegen as the greatest citizen to have ever lived there.
In his biography (2008, Valkhof) of Titus Brandsma, The Man behind the Myth, Dutch journalist Ton Crijnen claims that Brandsma's personality combined some vanity, a short tempered character, extreme energy, political simpleness, true charity, unpretentious piety, thorough decisiveness and great personal courage. His ideas were very much those of his own age and modern as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment