Titus Brandsma Titus Brandsma , O . Carm . , was a Dutch Carmelite friar , Catholic priest and professor of philosophy . Brandsma was vehemently opposed to Nazi ideology and spoke out against it many times before the Second World War . He was imprisoned in the infamous Dachau concentration camp , where he died . He has been beatified by the Catholic Church as a martyr of the faith . Early life . He was born Anno Sjoerd Brandsma to Titus Brandsma ( died 1920 ) and his wife Tjitsje Postma ( died 1933 ) at Oegeklooster , near Hartwerd , in the Province of Friesland , in 1881 . < ref name = rees / < re > < / ref > His parents , who ran a small dairy farm , were devout and committed Catholics , a minority in a predominantly - Calvinist region . With the exception of one daughter , all of their children entered religious Orders . < ref name = OC / As a young boy , Brandsma did his secondary studies in the town of Megen , at a Franciscan - run minor seminary for boys considering a priestly or religious vocation . Carmelite friar . Brandsma entered the novitiate of the Carmelite friars in Boxmeer on 17 September 1898 , where he took the religious name Titus ( in honor of his father ) by which he is now known , and professed his first vows in October 1899 . Ordained a priest in 1905 , Brandsma was knowledgeable in Carmelite mysticism and was awarded a doctorate of philosophy at Rome in 1909 . He then taught in various schools in the Netherlands . From 1916 on , he initiated and led a project to translate the works of St . Teresa of Ávila into Dutch . In 1921 Brandsma worked to resolve a controversy concerning Belgian artist Albert Servaes ' depiction of the Stations of the Cross . From this came his series of meditations on each of the 14 stations . One of the founders of the Catholic University of Nijmegen ( now Radboud University ) , Brandsma became a professor of philosophy and the history of mysticism at the school in 1923 . He later served as " Rector Magnificus " . He was noted for his constant availability to everyone , rather than for his scholarly work as a professor . Brandsma also worked as a journalist and was the ecclesiastical adviser to Catholic journalists by 1935 . That same year he did a lecture tour of the United States , speaking at various institutions of his Order . Imprisonment and death . After the invasion of the Netherlands by the Third Reich in May 1940 , it was Brandsma ' s fight against the spread of Nazi ideology and for educational and press freedom that brought him to the attention of the Nazis . In January 1942 he undertook to deliver by hand a letter from the Conference of Dutch Bishops to the editors of Catholic newspapers in which the bishops ordered them not to print official Nazi documents , as was required under a new law by the German occupiers . He had visited 14 editors before being arrested on the 19th of that month at the Boxmeer monastery . After being held prisoner in Scheveningen , Amersfoort , and Cleves , Brandsma was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp , arriving there on 19 June . His health quickly gave way , and he was transferred to the camp hospital . He died on 26 July 1942 , from a lethal injection administered by a nurse of the Allgemeine SS , as part of their program of medical experimentation on the prisoners . Legacy . Brandsma is honored as a martyr within the Roman Catholic Church . He was beatified in November 1985 by Pope John Paul II . His feast day is observed within the Carmelite Order on 27 July . In 2005 Brandsma was chosen by the inhabitants of Nijmegen as the greatest citizen to have lived there . A memorial church now stands in the city dedicated to him . Brandsma ' s studies on mysticism was the basis for the establishment in 1968 of the Titus Brandsma Institute in Nijmegen , dedicated to the study of spirituality . It is a collaboration between the Dutch Carmelite friars and Radboud University Nijmegen . In his biography Brandsma , " The Man behind the Myth " , Dutch journalist Ton Crijnen claims that Brandsma combined some vanity , a short tempered character , extreme energy , political simpleness , true charity , unpretentious piety , thorough decisiveness and great personal courage . His ideas were very much those of his own age and modern as well . He offset contemporary Catholicism ' s negative theological opinion about Judaism with a strong disaffection for any kind of Antisemitism in Hitler ' s Germany . Brandsma was honoured by the city of Dachau with a street adjoining the former camp , albeit one of the narrowest streets in the town .