Pope Francis added a new batch of Catholic saints May 15 in the Piazza San Pietro, raising to the altars 10 people whom the Church declares are among the blessed in heaven and worthy of emulation by the believing faithful. They are: Maria Domenica Mantovani, Maria Francesca Rubatto, Giustino Maria Russolillo, Luigi Maria Palazzolo, César de Bus, Lázaro Devasahayam Pillai, Carolina Santocanale, Anne-Marie Rivier, Charles de Foucauld and Titus Brandsma.
While all of these figures led diverse and intriguing lives dedicated to Jesus Christ and the community that still proclaims Him as Lord, the last two are probably the most familiar to non-specialists or those not in particular religious orders.
Charles de Foucauld was born in the Périgord region of France. He eventually became a Trappist and then left the order to live a solitary life as a sort of contemporary Desert Father, founding the Congregation of the Little Brothers of Jesus. In the 1920s, a best-selling biography was written about him by René Bazin, which described him as “Explorateur en Maroc, Ermite du Sahara” – “Explorer in Morocco, Hermit of the Sahara.” An expert by immersion in Tuareg Berber culture, he published the first dictionary to translate their language into French. He was eventually assassinated by tribal bandits and declared to be a martyr of the faith.
Titus Brandsma was a Dutch Carmelite priest and professor who repeatedly criticized the growing threat of the Nazi regime in Europe. Like the more famous Maximilian Kolbe, Brandsma paid for this stance with his life, the latter being injected with carbolic acid in the death camp at Dachau. He gave a set of wooden Rosary beads to the nurse who executed him, and she was later converted away from the distortions of atheistic Nazi ideology to become a devoted Catholic. Her pseudonymous testimony, the Report of “Tizia,” was intensively studied during the beatification and canonization processes.
On a recent visit to the National Shrine of Saint Therese of Lisieux in Darien, Ill., I was struck by the exhibit on her fellow Carmelite, Brandsma. A few of his admonitions stayed with me: “Do not yield to hatred. We are in a dark tunnel, but we have to go on. And, at the end, an eternal light is shining for us.” “Our mission is not really to do big things, but rather to do small things with greatness.” And, perhaps most profoundly: “Prayer is life, not an oasis in the desert of life.”
My friend and confrère Miguel Diaz, the former ambassador to the Holy See, was present for the canonization ceremonies. Fresh out of a private meeting Pope Francis held with him and some of my Loyola colleagues, Diaz told me: “In his homily for the events, Pope Francis captures what it means to be holy: love of God, self and neighbor. Love is the summit of Christian life. Love that begins with the radical acceptance that it is God that first loves us and calls us to do the same to our neighbors. To be holy is to exist for and from others. This existing, the Pope reminds us, is an embodied accompaniment. It means ‘Touching and looking, touching and looking at the flesh of Christ who suffers in our brothers and sisters.’ The women and men he declared saints today concretely manifested love in their lives. And as Pope Francis emphasized, like them, each one of us is called to embody love in our own distinct and human ways.”
He went on to say there are no “cloned saints.” Rather, each of us are called to imitate Christ’s love for humanity in our own particular and varied stations in life.
These newly canonized figures who will be remembered in elaborate liturgies, stained-glass windows and marble statues around the world are importantly not plaster saints, but instead human beings best understood as those who lived lives of limitless love. There is much, then, that our divided and contentious contemporary culture can learn from them.
Originally from Collingswood, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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