​Written by  Fr. Dennis O'Neill

Titus Brandsma, O. Carm (born Anno Sjoerd Brandsma 1881-1942) was a Dutch Carmelite friar, Catholic priest, and professor of philosophy. He was vehemently opposed to Nazi ideology and spoke out against it many times before the Second World War. He also was outspoken in a strong disaffection for any kind of antisemitism in Hitler's Germany. He was the son of Titus Brandsma and his wife Tjitsje Postma, born at Oegeklooster, near Hartwerd, the Netherlands. At the age of 11, he studied at a Franciscan run seminary in Megen. He entered the novitiate of the Carmelite friars in Boxmeer in 1891. There he took his religious name, "Titus". He was ordained a priest in 1905.

He was very knowledgeable in Carmelite mysticism and was awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy at Rome in 1909. He first worked as a writer and teacher and led a project to translate the works of Teresa if Avila into Dutch. In 1919, he founded and for two years acted as head of a secondary school in Oss - the present day Titus Brandsma Lyecum. One of the founders of the Catholic University of Nijmegen (now Radboud University), he became a professor of philosophy and the history of mysticism there in 1923. He later served as "rector magnificus" (193233). He was noted for his constant availability to everyone, rather than his scholarly work as a professor. He worked as a journalist and was the ecclesiastical adviser to Catholic journalists by 1935. He also stayed at the friary of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Kinsale (Ireland), were he practiced English. The same year, he traveled for a lecture tour of the United States and Canada, speaking at various Carmelite institutions. 

After the invasion of the Netherlands by the Third Reich in May of 1940, Brandsma's longterm fight against the spread of Nazi ideology and for educational and press freedom brought him to the attention of the Nazis. In January of 1942, he undertook to deliver by hand a letter from the Conference of Dutch Bishops to editors of Catholic newspapers in which the bishops ordered them not to print official Nazi documents, as was required under a new law by the German occupiers. He had visited 14 of the editors before being arrested on January 19th at Boxmeer monastery. reaction to the Dutch bishops' ordering all priests publicly during Mass on the last Sunday of July to denounce the Nazi's treatment of the Jews.

After being held a prisoner in Scheveningen, Amersfoort, and Cleves, Brandsma was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, arriving there on June 19th. His health quickly gave way, and he was transferred to the camp hospital, where he died on July 26, 1942, from a lethal injection. He was beatified in November 1985 by Pope John Paul II and canonized on May 15, 2022 by Pope Francis. His feast day as a saint was first celebrated  on July 27, 2022.

We have only a tiny relic of Titus Brandsma, a portion of his habit (since his remains were cremated at Dachau). It is placed in the northeast corner of our shrine in a reliquary with a small portion of the habit of St. Maximilian Kolbe - the Franciscan, who was martyred at Auschwitz in 1941 by lethal injection. Above them is a portion of the wedding dress worn by Edith Stein the day in 1934 she became a Carmelite nun, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She too died at Auschwitz, along with her sister Rosa,  August 9, 1942 - a part of the Nazis' rounding up all Jewish converts to Catholicism in Catholicism in reaction to the Dutch bishops' ordering all priests publicly during Mass on the last Sunday of July to denounce the Nazi's treatment of the Jews. 

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