Deepertruth: Saint Titus Brandsma

Saint Titus Brandsma 7/26/2023

As a journalist, Brandsma was fearless. He spoke out when it seemed everyone else was quietly looking the other way. He was willing to stand alone against a government that resisted the will of the people. When he lived and worked in the Netherlands during the 1930s and ’40s, social media had not yet developed. What Pope John Paul II called the “digital continent” — that new way of communicating across borders — was the stuff of imagination. Still, Titus Brandsma, a priest of the Carmelite order and a journalist, managed to communicate widely with the Dutch faithful. He served as editor of his local newspaper and as ecclesiastical adviser to Catholic journalists at some 30 Dutch newspapers.

Working as a journalist Brandsma served as ecclesiastical advisor to Catholic journalists. His long-standing opposition to Nazi ideology came to the attention of the Nazis when they invaded the Netherlands in 1940. In direct opposition to the Third Reich, the Conference of Dutch Bishops sent a letter ordering Catholic newspaper editors not to print Nazi propaganda. Fr. Brandsma was arrested while hand delivering the letter in January 1942. After being imprisoned in several other facilities, in June he was taken to the Dachau camp in Germany.

Father Brandsma drafted the Dutch Catholic bishops’ widely-circulated pastoral letter condemning anti-Semitism, which was read in Catholic parishes throughout the country.