After an extensive investigation into the life and the death of Emperor Karl of Austria, the Church now confirms definitively: Emperor Karl is a heroic example of Christian virtues. Acquired during a life lived responsibly as a human being, statesman, husband and father, and developed even up until his death in exile, his virtues are shining examples of his personal journey towards Christ. His confidence, despite the uncertainty of his times, was motivated by the words of the Holy Gospels: “Thy Will be done.” Even in the darkest, loneliest, and hardest hours of his life, this was his clear aim. On his deathbed Emperor Karl said: “I have to suffer so much so that my peoples can again come together”.
Today, decades later, his peoples have found new forms of communal identity. May they recognize in the newly beatified Emperor, who was devoted to all of them, a heavenly intercessor and an example illuminating the way into the future, a future which is responsible before God, and responsible for the respect and dignity of every human being.”
[Note: In 1972, upon the fiftieth anniversary of the death of His Imperial Majesty, the late Emperor’s body was disinterred and examined by an ecclesial and family commission. It was found to be incorrupt.]
At the Parish of St. Mary the Virgin in Arlington, Texas today a mass was said for the Cause of the late servant of God His Imperial Majesty Emperor Karl von Habsburg, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. The parish will be sending a delegation to the Beatification of His Imperial Majesty in Rome in October and will meet with His Imperial Highness the Archduke Otto von Habsburg, Member of the Parliament of Europe and son of the late Emperor. Please pray for the soul of the Emperor, his family, and for his intercession for Europe and the Western World in this time of need.
Austria wasn't only blessed with Catholic emperors but chancellors too. Here's a recent book published by Angelus Press which relates:
http://www.angeluspress.org/new_offerings.htm
An Austrian Patriot
Fr. Johannes Messner
Foreword by Dr. Alice von Hildebrand
The brief Chancellorship of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria, lasting from May 20, 1932, until his assassination by Nazi agents on July 25, 1934, was one of the high-water marks of all European politics in the 20th century. Fr. Messner’s Dollfuss chronicles the work of the Chancellor, whose legacy is his effort to fashion Austrian public life around the social Doctrine of the Church as expressed in Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.
In a time like our own, when, as Messner writes, there was "hardly any hope that it would ever again be possible to establish a State on Christian, or rather on Catholic, principles," Austria under Chancellor Dollfuss represented "a check...[on] the process of eliminating God and the natural moral law from public life." Today it remains, as it was then, a beacon which "leads the way to the truly Christian State."
"[Dollfuss was] the representative of all that remains of the Holy Roman Empire." –G.K. Chesterton
I missed this a week or so. (What being out of town does to one!)
Thanks for the post.