The friar was taken to a prison in the seaside town of Scheveningen, where the interrogating officer demanded to know why he had disobeyed state regulations.
“As a Catholic, I could have done nothing differently,” Brandsma responded, according to Father Hanley.
The officer, Captain Paul Hardegen, later asked Brandsma to express in writing why his countrymen scorned the Dutch Nazi party.
“The Dutch,” the friar wrote, “have made great sacrifices out of love for God and possess an abiding faith in God whenever they have had to prove adherence to their religion … If it is necessary, we, the Dutch people, will give our lives for our religion.”
“The Nazi movement is regarded by the Dutch people not only as an insult to God in relation to his creatures, but a violation of the glorious traditions of the Dutch nation.”
In conclusion, Brandsma said: “God bless the Netherlands. God bless Germany. May God grant that both nations will soon be standing side by side in full peace and harmony.”
Signs of the Cross
The Dutch friar was always meticulously organized. He resolved not to waste a moment of his time in prison. He followed a strict timetable that included “walks” around his cell while smoking his pipe (until it was confiscated.) He worked on a biography of the Carmelite St. Teresa of Avila, composed meditations on the Stations of the Cross and wrote letters.
On March 12, 1942, this routine was broken when Brandsma was taken to a transit camp at Amersfoort, central Netherlands. With around 100 other prisoners, he was forced to stand outside in the bone-chilling rain.
The men were led inside and ordered to change their clothes. But as Brandsma removed his drenched black clerical suit, the prisoners were forced outside again, this time naked.
The Carmelite was put to work later clearing a forest. Despite the grueling labor, he remained cheerful, according to fellow prisoners, who said that he would share his tiny rations with the hungry and show special care for Jewish prisoners.
Brandsma disobeyed a ban on priestly ministry, giving prisoners his daily blessing by discreetly making the Sign of the Cross on their hands with his thumb. He heard confessions, visited the dying, and even led the Stations of the Cross.
He stood firm in the face of further Gestapo questioning and was eventually told that he would be sent to the Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany, later called “the largest priest cemetery in the world.”
With his health collapsing, Brandsma stopped en route at a prison in Kleve, northwestern Germany, where he made an unsuccessful appeal for parole.
“In Dachau, I will meet friends, and God the Lord is everywhere,” he wrote during the stopover. “I could be in Dachau for a very long time. It doesn’t have such a very good name that you really long for it.”
‘I had Jesus with me’
“From the very moment Titus entered the camp, his calmness and gentleness infuriated his captors,” wrote Father Hanley. “They beat him mercilessly with fists, clubs, and boards. They kicked, punched, and gouged him, drawing blood and oftentimes leaving him nearly unconscious in the mud.”
During one beating, Brandsma was holding a consecrated Host concealed in a tobacco pouch. He kept it safe by keeping his arm pinned to his body as the blows rained down. When he made it back to his bunk, another Carmelite prisoner tried to comfort him. “Thank you, Brother,” Brandsma said, “but don’t have pity on me. I had Jesus with me in the Eucharist.”
The friar suffered from such painful sores on his feet that his fellow prisoners would have to carry him back to the barracks at the end of the day’s work.
Throughout, he retained what one inmate called a “cheerful courage.” He advised others to be patient and avoid hatred. “We are here in a dark tunnel but we have to go on. At the end, the eternal light is shining for us,” he told them.
For as long as possible, he resisted going to the camp’s infirmary, aware that doctors performed sadistic experiments on patients. But he was finally admitted, and on Sunday, July 26, 1942, a nurse gave him a lethal injection.
A smile for everyone
Brandsma’s beatification cause opened in the Dutch Diocese of Den Bosch in 1952. It was the first process for a candidate considered a martyr of the Nazi regime.
The friar was beatified by Pope John Paul II on Nov. 3, 1985, as a martyr for the faith.
In his homily, the Polish pope praised Brandsma’s “constant vein of optimism.”
“It accompanied him even in the hell of the Nazi camp. Until the end, he remained a source of support and hope for the other prisoners: he had a smile for everyone, a word of understanding, a gesture of kindness,” he said.
“The same ‘nurse,’ who on July 26, 1942, injected him with deadly poison, later testified that she always kept vivid in her memory the face of that priest who ‘had compassion on me.’”
The nurse, known as “Titia,” testified that Brandsma gave her his rosary. When she responded that she could not pray and did not need it, he encouraged her to recite the second part of the Hail Mary, “Pray for us sinners.”
“I started laughing then,” she recalled. “He told me that, if I were to pray a lot, I would not be lost.”
Thirty-six years after Brandsma’s beatification, on Nov. 25, 2021, Pope Francis recognized a miracle attributed to the friar’s intercession.
A Catholic priest in Florida told CNA in 2018 that he attributed his miraculous healing from cancer to Brandsma’s intercession.
Fr. Michael Driscoll, O. Carm, was diagnosed with advanced melanoma in 2004. Shortly afterward, someone gave him a small piece of Brandsma’s black suit, which the American priest applied to his head each day.
Driscoll underwent major surgery, with doctors removing 84 lymph nodes and a salivary gland. He then went through 35 days of radiation treatment.
Doctors said that his subsequent recovery from Stage 4 cancer was scientifically inexplicable. Driscoll recalled that his doctor told him: “No need to come back, don’t waste your money on airfare in coming back here. You’re cured. I don’t find any more cancer in you.”
A congress of theologians acknowledged the healing as a miracle on May 25, 2021. A gathering of cardinals and bishops reached the same conclusion on Nov. 9 that year.
Pope Francis confirmed their opinion on March 4, 2022, announcing that he would canonize Brandsma. The pope is expected to preside at a canonization Mass in St. Peter’s Square on May 15 — the first since Oct. 13, 2019.
Father Míceál O’Neill, O. Carm., prior general of the Carmelite Order, said: “This is the news we have been awaiting for a long time and it comes as the result of the Church’s recognition of the holiness and witness of Titus Brandsma.”
“It is not without significance that we have this celebration at a time when truth and integrity is suffering seriously in the major conflicts that now threaten the peace of the world.”
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