Concentration camp hero

Fr Titus beatified
A DUTCH Carmelite who died in a Nazi concentration camp is to be beatified on Sunday.
Fr Titus Brandsma will he honoured by Pope John Paul in St Peter's Basilica. Born in 1881 in the northern province of Friesland, Fr Brandsma gained world attention with his antiNazi lectures in the 1930s.
After the German invasion in May 1940, he represented the Dutch bishops in their long struggle to protect their schools from Nazi influence. He also upheld the freedom of the press and refused to publish Nazi propaganda in his periodicals, Arrested at his Nijmegen monastery in January 1942, Fr Brands= was ordered by the Germans to explain why the Dutch, especially the Catholics, were opposed to "national socialism". He responded with an eight-page summary of his earlier lectures on the evil of Nazism, and for his pains was sent to Dachau. After severe beatings he died in the camp hospital on July 26, 1942.
In 1952 Carmelites began to prepare the case for Fr Brandsma's beatification and hopefully ultimate canonisation.
Announcing the beatification last month, Vatican spokesmen drew attention to the parallels between Fr Brandsma's experiences in Dachau and those of Fr Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), a Polish Franciscan who died in Auschwitz after he volunteered to take the place of another prisoner who had been condemned to death by starvation. Fr Kolbe was canonised by Pope John Paul in 1982.