The Saintly Emperor

CHARLES I of Habsburg-Lothringen (1887 -1922), the last ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 3 October 2004.



During the Mass of Beatification, John Paul stated, “The decisive task of Christians consists in seeking, recognizing and following God’s will in all things. The Christian statesman, Charles of Austria, confronted this challenge every day. To his eyes, war appeared as ‘something appalling’. Amid the tumult of the First World War, he strove to promote the peace initiative of my predecessor, Benedict XV.



“From the beginning, Emperor Charles conceived of his office as a holy service to his people. His chief concern was to follow the Christian vocation to holiness also in his political actions. For this reason, his thoughts turned to social assistance. May he be an example for all of us, especially for those who have political responsibilities in Europe today!”





Prince of peace





Sworn in as Emperor on December 30, 1916, when the First World War was already in full swing, historians have been mixed in their evaluation of Charles and his reign. One of the most critical was Helmut Rumpler, head of the Habsburg Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, who described Charles as “a dilettante, far too weak for the challenges facing him, out of his depth, and not really a politician.”



Other were much more generous, the English writer, Herbert Vivian, wrote, “Charles was a great leader, a Prince of peace, who wanted to save the world from a year of war; a statesman with ideas to save his people from the complicated problems of his empire; a King who loved his people, a fearless man, a noble soul, distinguished, a saint from whose grave blessings come.”



And Anatole France, the French novelist, stated, “Emperor Charles is the only decent man to come out of the war in a leadership position, yet he was a saint and no one listened to him. He sincerely wanted peace, and therefore was despised by the whole world. It was a wonderful chance that was lost.”



Since Charles’ beatification, much documentary evidence has surfaced, and increasingly, the tide of historical evaluation is beginning to turn in his favour.



The documents reveal a politically farseeing man whose sole interest was the well-being of his subjects, and with forward-looking ideas on the role of Europe.





Archduke Rudolf



“The beatification process has greatly changed the way historians see my father,” says Archduke Rudolf of Austria, the youngest son of Blessed Charles’ seven children.



“Many scholars have finally begun to set aside the old prejudices against my father, which stemmed from the fact that he was a devout and practicing Catholic, and have begun an objective review of his life and thinking. In the process, they are discovering that there was genius in him.”



Archduke Rudolf, who turns 90 this September, has amassed a great deal of documentary evidence and testimonies which proved invaluable during the beatification process.



The Messenger of Saint Anthony met him in the northern Italian city of Brescia, in the home of the youngest of his five children, the 36-year-old Archduchess Catharina-Maria of Austria, wife of Count Maximiliano Secco of Aragon.



“Immediately after being sworn in, my father initiated a feverish series of diplomatic contacts to stop the carnage,” Archduke Rudolf told the Messenger. “He saw eye-to-eye with Pope Benedict XV who had called the Great War ‘a useless slaughter’, and went out of his way to convince heads-of-state in Europe to initiate serious peace negotiations.



In his maiden speech as Emperor, my father declared that his main objective was to broker for peace among the warring nations. He condemned the deadly weapons being used in the conflict for the first time, like nerve gas. His efforts however, were generally received with disdain, especially from lobby groups with links to certain Masonic lodges, and these efforts were eventually to cost him the throne.



“Today, however, history is beginning to do him justice. Many are beginning to see my father as an enlightened pacifist; as one of the first statesmen to envision the European Union – a community of nations held together by a common charter which contemplated economic cooperation, respect for minorities, and human rights for all.



“If he had been listened to, the European Union might have arisen long before it actually did, and the horrors of the Second World War would have been averted.”





John Paul II



Knowing that Archduke Rudolf had had a private audience with John Paul II in the first years of his pontificate, I asked him why the Pope had set his father up as an example for all politicians.



“Our late Pope,” Archduke Rudolf replied, “had in-depth knowledge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire because it comprised significant portions of the Polish people. He had received this knowledge from his father, Karol Wojtyla Sr, who had been an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army when my father was Emperor. John Paul had great admiration for my father; I received proof of this during the private audience he granted to our family. On that occasion my mother, Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma, was also present. During the meeting the Pope called my mother, ‘My Empress’, and then made this startling confession, ‘Do you know why my name is Karol? Because my father had great admiration for his emperor, Charles I, which in Polish becomes Karol’.



“John Paul saw in my father the last of a royal line of Christian rulers, among whom are also to be found a number of saints. The Pope was disappointed by the fact that Europe, which had finally achieved unity, was rejecting its Christian roots. This is why, during his speech on the day of the beatification, he exhorted politicians to follow my father’s example”.



I recognised the same note of disappointment in the Archduke’s voice as in our late pontiff’s voice when he used to expressed disappointment at the loss of values in contemporary society. So I asked him, “What lessons do you think your father has to teach to contemporary politicians?”



“Three, mainly,” the Archduke replied. “First, the courage to uphold one’s ideas and convictions; secondly, true love for one’s fellow countrymen; and thirdly, love for the family.



“My father was proud of his Catholic faith, and never sought to hide his religious convictions. When he was sworn in as Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary he felt he had been ‘anointed by God’, that is, chosen by God to guide his people. This was a ‘mission’ in the true sense of the word, just like the one given to the Jewish kings in olden times. My mother often told me that, after his coronation ceremony, Charles offered his life to God for the good of his people.



“This is why, when the Empire fell apart, he never abdicated – he simply couldn’t. He had been anointed by God, and no human power could undo what God had done. Not even the rigours of exile managed to persuade him.



“The heavy commitments of his office did not prevent him from spending quality time with us. He saw the family as one of the fundamental pillars of society. However, for him ‘the family’ did not only comprise us. He saw all of his subjects as a sort of immense, extended family, and had fatherly love for all of them.



“Though my father passed away long ago, I often feel his presence among us, blessing and protecting my large family. My mother used to tell me that my father, when looking down on us, his children, used to say that it was necessary to pray every day for our future families, and even for those of our children. It was as though my father had premonitions of the attacks that the institution of marriage would receive in the future, so whenever I see my children and grandchildren, my thoughts are naturally led back to my father. I also encourage my children to pray for their own families”.





Archduchess Catharina-Maria



During this intense dialogue, Archduchess Catharina-Maria of Austria, daughter of Archduke Rudolf, and granddaughter of Blessed Charles I, had been sitting quietly beside her father, and at this point decided to intervene in the conversation.



“Nowadays,” said Archduchess Catharina-Maria, “people tend to believe that royals are incapable of being true Christians. This is a prejudice. Christ’s teachings can be followed in any station of life. My grandfather was immensely wealthy and powerful before the Empire’s demise; he could easily have led a life of enjoyments and dissipation, but instead chose, from his boyhood, to lead a hard life of self-denial. He had received strong Christian values from his mother, and put them into practice when he became an adult”.



Archduchess Catharina-Maria holds a degree in Political Science, and has authored various studies on her royal ancestors. She often stays in Brescia with husband Count Maximilian Secco of Aragon and their two children, Constantine, 8, and Nicolò, 6. In the city Catharina founded a cultural and religious association whose task it is to research her illustrious grandfather and spread his devotion. The association is based in the parish of San Gottardo, where a relic of the saintly emperor is enshrined.



“I am the youngest of Blessed Charles’ grandchildren,” says Archduchess Catharina. “I collected most of my information from my grandmother, Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma. My grandmother often stayed in our home in Brussels. Being the youngest, I was her favourite. She was very religious, and was the first person to give me religious instruction, and later prepared me for my first Holy Communion.



“Zita always spoke about my grandfather with so much passion that it was impossible not to be infected by her words. From her accounts I realized that my grandfather had not only been a saint in his adulthood, but that he had always been one, even as a child. Sainthood was innate in him, only that it was not evident to most people, and, at the beginning, no one, not even my grandmother, were able to notice it.



“My grandmother was an extraordinary person, and she was also probably a saint. She died in 1989, and she has already been proclaimed a ‘servant of God’, because a beatification process has been instituted for her as well.



“My grandmother often recounted the strange episode of her audience with Pope Saint Pius X. In 1911, shortly before getting married, she had a private conversation with the Holy Father. During the conversation Pope Pius X kept on repeating that Charles would become emperor and that she, Zita, the empress. My grandmother believed that the Holy Father had not been informed that Charles was not in direct line for the throne. The heir presumptive was Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of emperor Franz Joseph, and uncle of Charles. No one could have imagined, at that time, that Franz Ferdinand would be assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914 – the even that precipitated the Great War. Could the Pope know the future? During the audience my grandmother tried to stop the Holy Father to clear the misunderstanding, but the Pope would not listen, and continued his recommendations for when she would become empress. The Pope also said something else that made a particular impression on her. The Holy Father affirmed that Charles’ Christian virtues would become an example for all peoples.



“My grandmother left the audience thinking that the Pope had simply mistook her fiancée for someone else. It was only later, when the Pope’s words came true, that she realised she had been witness to a prophecy”.





Empress Zita



After Charles’ death in the Portuguese island of Madeira, the family moved to Belgium, but in 1940, with the Nazi occupation of the country, Zita and her family were forced to flee and, after a perilous journey, they arrived in New York, but they eventually settled in Quebec. In 1952 she returned to Europe.



“Was your grandmother Zita aware of Charles’ holiness?” I asked Catharina.



“At first she saw her fiancée as a good and upright man, and only gradually did she become aware that his faith and love for God informed every act and moment of his life.



“On the day of her wedding she was thrilled when her husband told her, ‘Darling, now we have to help each other on the stairway to heaven’.



“She believed that his natural goodness was strengthened by his love for the Eucharist which, at a certain point of his life, became a daily practice, and also by his deep devotion to the Virgin Mary. Already as an emperor he would spend a part of the day kneeling before the tabernacle, and later, during his exile in Madeira, he obtained permission to keep the Blessed Sacrament in his home, in front of which he would spend long hours in adoration.



“My grandparents lived their marriage as a Christian sacrament in the deepest sense of the word; God was their guiding star in everything they did.



“On his deathbed my grandfather’s last words to my grieving grandmother were, “My whole aspiration in life has always been to discern, as clearly as possible, God’s will for me, and to carry it out to the best of my ability.



“My grandmother was only 29 when he died. She was still a very beautiful woman, so she was courted by many men. But she refused all proposals and remained faithful to her late husband. She always wore mourning black because, at her husband’s death, she had vowed that she would never again wear any gaily coloured clothing that would indicate joy or happiness.



“What this really means is that she remained in love with him. I last met her a few days before her death. She was almost 97, but still very much switched on and serene. She told me, ‘The time has come for me to go. You can’t imagine how happy I am: I’m going to see your grandfather. I haven’t seen him for 67 years!’. And her eyes were sparkling with anticipation, like those of a young woman about to get married”.





A MIRACLE IN FLORIDA



In Rome the postulator for the cause of Blessed Charles I, Andrea Ambrosi, an attorney, is working at the last stage of the process: canonisation.



To conclude successfully this last stage the Church requires that a new miracle be performed after the candidate has been beatified. Now this new miracle brought about through Blessed Charles’ intercessions really seems to have taken place, and concerns an American woman, one Tamara Staggs from Orlando, Florida.



In 2002 Mrs Staggs was diagnosed with breast cancer. An operation was performed on her, and she then went through the normal chemotherapy treatment. In 2004, however, the tumour returned, and tragically, was found to have metastasized to the liver. Drugs and other therapies proved ineffective, and eventually doctors declared she had only a few months to live.



Now Joseph and Paula Melançon, a married couple, happened to be friends with both Mrs Staggs and Archduke Karl Peter, one of the five children of Archduke Rudolf, and grandson of Charles I.  Archduke Karl Peter invited the Melançons over to Rome to participate in the beatification ceremony of his grandfather, Emperor Charles.



After the ceremony the Melançons began to pray to Blessed Charles to intercede for Mrs Staggs. At first they were sceptical as Mrs Staggs was Baptist, however, they gradually managed to involve her in their prayers, and … suddenly… the healing took place!



On January 19, 2005, a CAT scan failed to reveal any evidence of the tumour in the liver. Successive checks came up with similar results: the cancer has simply disappeared!



The Diocese of Orlando has already examined the case and collected a number of written testimonies given under oath from various witnesses and doctors, and the papers are now in Rome.



“Three years have passed since the healing, so it can be regarded as undeniable by now,” says Ambrosi. “I’ve already had the case reviewed by a famous Oncologist from La Sapienza university in Rome, and he has certified that the evidence is highly reliable.



However, to be absolutely sure, I have decide to wait till 2010, that is, till five years after the healing, but I feel sure that this miracle will guarantee the canonisation of Blessed Charles.”



In the meantime Mrs Stags, who has been so joyously taken aback by the great grace she has received, has begun her process of conversion to Roman Catholicism.