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Titus Brandsma (; born Anno Sjoerd Brandsma; 23 February 188126 July 1942) was a Dutch Carmelite priest and a professor of philosophy. Brandsma was vehemently opposed to Nazism and spoke out against it many times before World War II. He was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered in 1942.
Brandsma was beatified by the Catholic Church in November 1985 as a Christian martyr of the faith and canonized on 15 May 2022 by Pope Francis.
From the age of 11, Brandsma pursued his secondary studies in the town of Megen, at a Franciscan-run minor seminary for boys considering a priestly or religious vocation.
Ordained a priest in 1905, Brandsma was knowledgeable in Carmelite mysticism and was awarded a doctorate of philosophy from Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1909. From 1909 to 1923 he lived in Oss and worked as a writer and teacher. From 1916 on, he initiated and led a project to translate the works of Teresa of Ávila into Dutch.Rees, Joseph. Titus Brandsma: A Modern Martyr. 49–50. In 1919 he founded and for two years acted as head of a secondary school in Oss—the present day Titus Brandsma Lyceum.
In 1921, Brandsma worked to resolve a controversy concerning Belgian artist Albert Servaes' depiction of the Stations of the Cross. From this came his series of meditations on each of the 14 stations.
One of the founders of the Catholic University of Nijmegen (now Radboud University), Brandsma became a professor of philosophy and the history of mysticism at the school in 1923. He later served as rector magnificus (1932–33). He was noted for his constant availability to everyone, rather than for his scholarly work as a professor. Brandsma also worked as a journalist and was the ecclesiastical adviser to Catholic journalists by 1935. He stayed at the friary of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Kinsale, where he practiced English. That same year he traveled for a lecture tour of the United States and Canada, speaking at various institutions of his order. On the occasion of his visit to a Carmelite seminary in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Brandsma wrote of the Niagara Falls that "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 January 1942 he undertook to deliver by hand a letter from the Conference of Dutch Bishops to the 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 fourteen editors before being arrested on 19 January at the Boxmeer monastery.
After being held prisoner in Scheveningen, Amersfoort, and Cleves, Brandsma was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, arriving there on 19 June. His health quickly gave way, and he was transferred to the camp hospital. He died on 26 July 1942, from a lethal injection administered by a nurse of the Allgemeine SS, as part of their program of medical experimentation on the prisoners.
On 25 November 2021, Pope Francis recognized a miracle attributed to the intercession of Brandsma, who "was killed in hatred of the faith", and authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to advance Brandsma's cause for sainthood.
On 4 March 2022, a papal consistory opened the way for his canonization and set the date of the canonization ceremony to 15 May 2022, together with Charles de Foucauld and eight others.
On Sunday, 15 May 2022, in front of more than 50,000 people from around the world, Pope Francis canonized Brandsma and nine other saints at a Mass in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.
"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", Pope Francis said during the Mass.
Brandsma's studies on mysticism was the basis for the establishment in 1968 of the Titus Brandsma Institute in Nijmegen, dedicated to the study of spirituality. It is a collaboration between the Dutch Carmelite friars and Radboud University Nijmegen.
In his biography of Brandsma, The Man behind the Myth, Dutch journalist Ton Crijnen claims that Brandsma's character consisted of some vanity, a short temper, extreme energy, political innocence, true charity, unpretentious piety, thorough decisiveness, and great personal courage. His ideas were very much those of his own age and modern as well. He offset contemporary Catholicism's negative theological opinion about Judaism with a strong disaffection for any kind of antisemitism in Hitler's Germany.
Brandsma was honoured by the city of Dachau with a street adjoining the former camp, albeit one of the narrowest streets in the town.
Brandsma participated in the international Esperanto movement and is considered a patron saint by the International Union of Catholic Esperantists.
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