CNA Newsroom, 03 May, 2024 / 11:05 pm (ACI Africa).
World Press Freedom Day is celebrated every May 3, drawing attention to the importance of free and independent news media.
Among modern-day saints, there is a journalist-priest who suffered martyrdom by the Nazis for his work in Catholic media: St. Titus Brandsma.
St. Titus (1881–1942), canonized by Pope Francis in 2022, was a Carmelite priest and native of the Netherlands. During the Nazi occupation of that country, the Nazi public relations bureau informed Dutch newspapers that they had to accept advertisements and press releases emanating from official sources.
The cardinal-archbishop of Ultrecht, Johannes de Jong, commissioned Brandsma, in his capacity as a journalist and spiritual director of the country’s Catholic journalists, to convey the hierarchy’s response to the Nazis’ mandate to all the Catholic editors in the country.
Brandsma concluded each visit to the editors with remarks along these lines: “We have reached our limit. We cannot serve them. It will be our duty to refuse Nazi propaganda definitely if we wish to remain Catholic newspapers. Even if they threaten us with severe penalties, suspension, or discontinuance of our newspapers, we cannot conform with their orders.”