Santi Taboada
On Black Ribbon Day: The European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. We remember three 20th century martyrs of totalitarianism.
Some Catholic martyrs of Nazi persecution are well known, including Saint Maximilian Kolbe and Saint Edith Stein. But the story of Saint Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite, may be less familiar.
St. Titus was a professor at the University of Nijmegen. He traveled the world giving lectures on philosophy and Carmelite spirituality. As an ecclesiastical advisor to the Catholic Journalists' Association, he was put in charge of overseeing nearly thirty newspapers. This position ultimately cost him his life.
Following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, Fr. Titus visited newspaper offices, urging them not to publish Nazi propaganda. As soon as he finished the trip, he was arrested.
After several months in prison, he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp. Before receiving the lethal injection, Fr. Titus gave his rosary to the nurse who would administer the dose.
The woman, a Nazi sympathizer, told him she did not know how to pray. Father Titus told her she only had to say, “Pray for us sinners.” She later converted and, years afterward, testified during his canonization process.
Another victim of the Nazis was farmer Franz Jägerstätter. A husband and father of three daughters, he was the only person in his village to vote against Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938.
When he was called up by the German army, he reported to the recruitment center and said he would not fight, offering instead to perform nonviolent service. He was arrested and convicted of sedition. Five months later, he was executed by guillotine.
Blessed Teofilius Matulionis, a Lithuanian bishop under Soviet rule, suffered a slower form of martyrdom. Secretly ordained a bishop, he spent many years in prison after being sentenced on multiple occasions.
He was initially imprisoned in Moscow for two years. In 1929, he was sent to the Siberian camp on the Solovki Islands in the White Sea. There he spent four years, and many months in solitary confinement enduring forced labor.
After his release, he was sentenced for a third time following the Soviet conquest of Lithuania. This time, he served seven years. Afterward, he devoted himself to Church administration under KGB surveillance. Teofilius urged priests not to cooperate with the regime. Following the orders of Pope Pius XII, he secretly ordained a bishop, which led to his exile.
Months after Pope John XXIII named him archbishop and assistant to the papal throne, he died under mysterious circumstances following a KGB search of his apartment. He was just months past his 89th birthday. Tests on his remains confirmed that he had been poisoned.
All three martyrs shared a refusal to cooperate with regimes that denied freedom and human dignity. The Church remembers their sacrifice and their steadfast witness, in a world where Catholics are persecuted for their faith even today.
