Dutch priest Titus Brandsma will be canonized on 15 May. Pope Francis made the announcement on Friday. Brandsma lived and worked in Oss for a large part of his life. The Pope acknowledged a miracle attributed to the priest in November. An American father is said to have been cured of cancer in 2004 after touching a piece of Brandsma’s clothing.
Brandsma (1881-1942) became a priest in 1905. From the 1930s he openly opposed Nazism. In 1942 the German occupiers picked him up and took him to Dachau concentration camp. The Nazis labeled him a ‘dangerous person’.
In Dachau he was a great support to other prisoners, until he himself died as a result of poor living conditions and abuse. Brandsma was awarded the Resistance Cross in 1982 and in many Dutch and foreign places chapels, churches, schools and streets are named after him.
He was beatified in 1985. Last November, the Pope approved a proposal from the bishops and cardinals in the Vatican to canonize Titus Brandsma.
Reaction Bishop De Korte
Bishop Gerard de Korte of the diocese of ‘s-Hertogenbosch is grateful for the official announcement of the canonization of Father Titus Brandsma. Father Titus spent a large part of his life within the diocese in Megen, Boxmeer, Oss and Nijmegen.
He was ordained a priest on June 17, 1905 in the Bossche Sint-Jan. In the remembrance chapel of the cathedral is a bust of Saint Father and an urn with ashes from a mass grave at Dachau concentration camp.
De Korte calls Father Titus a patron saint for journalists and a saint of today. He also expresses the wish to go to Rome with many to attend the canonization of Titus Brandsma.
Bishop de Korte recorded the following message in St. John’s on Friday: