“He who wants to win the world for Christ, must have the courage to come in conflict with it.”

The Catholic Church canonized Saint Titus on May 22, 2022. He had died at the hands of the Nazis, fighting their spread in Europe.

Titus was born in 1881 in Bolsward of the Netherlands. He became a Carmelite as a young man, and displayed dazzling intellect and scholarship, receiving ordination as a priest in 1905, and earning a doctorate in philosophy at Rome.

He taught in Dutch universities and lectured in many countries on Carmelite spirituality and mysticism.

In 1935, he became an advisor to Catholic journalists and his academic and spiritual studies were also printed and widely read.

“The Nazi movement is a black lie,” he wrote in one of his articles. “It is pagan.” He and his fellow clergy clearly saw that “you can’t be Catholic and vote for the Nazi Party.”

He was tasked with hand delivering a letter to Holland’s many Catholic news outlets, telling them to reject the Nazis’ fake news and press releases. He was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the dreaded Dachau Concentration Camp.

He was starved and beaten for ministering to other prisoners, making the Sign of the Cross discreetly on their hands with his thumb, and urging prisoners to pray for the guards who tortured them.

In his last days, he penned a prayer to Christ Crucified, in part, “Oh, for me, all suffering is good, for in this way I resemble You.”

He was murdered at the age of 61 by an injection of carbolic acid in July of 1942. He gave the nurse who injected him, a lapsed Catholic and SS operative, his only possession, which was a Rosary made from old pieces of bread given to him by another inmate. She rebuffed his gift but returned to the Faith after the war.

He is the patron saint of Catholic journalists, tobacconists, and Friesland, Netherlands.

His feast day is July 27.

For God’s Glory.