Blessed Karl of Aus

Mons. Ignacio Barreiro
October 2004



In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit:

In this solemn Mass we raise our gratitude to Christ the King and to the Holy Father for the beatification of the Emperor Karl of Austria. His name is joined to the long column of Holy Kings and Queens, Saints as Louis King of France, Saint Ferdinand of Castile and Saint Henry the Emperor that have led Christianity.
The Blessed Karl of Austria had great natural and supernatural qualities, first and foremost an enormous sense of responsibility; he made any possible effort for the common good of his reign. He prohibited dueling even among officers and limited the bad popular press. He knew the enormous value of personal witness and the importance of the good example that rulers should give. Once he said to the head of his Chancery: "As an Emperor I have to set the good example. If everyone simply did their Christian duties, we would not have so much hate and misery in the world". He had a great personal bravery, a great austerity of life, a supernatural charity already manifested when he was a child; all of these was grounded in a constant prayer life and was based on an unshakeable confidence in the Divine Providence. In different occasions, during the war, it was noticed how he felt upon himself the heavy responsibility of ordering so many soldiers to enter into combat. In many cases during the war or during subsequent events after the fall of the Empire, he demonstrated a great physical bravery supported by his constant union with God, because the only way to be indifferent to danger is either madness or a total confidence in God's protection. He demonstrated great skills as a general in many occasions; among these we can mention the containment of the terrible offensive of the Russian General Brusilov in Eastern Galizia in 1916.

His spirituality was dominated by a great confidence in Divine Providence. In a letter to the Holy Father in 1919 he said: "In all my troubles, I have never lost my faith, I have never despaired". In another letter to Cardinal Bisleti he underlined: "I base myself, with patience and with a confidence that no one can destroy, in the help and assistance of the Almighty, to see one day the triumph of my rights, rights that I want to preserve only for the glory of God and for the good of peoples that the Divine Providence has entrusted to me.” He always had a fervent devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the difficult situation in which he found himself on April 1919, he writes to the Holy Father underlining his confidence that the Sacred Heart will not abandon the country that has been consecrated to Him.
As a child, his prayer life has always been remarkable; as he grew up, whenever it was possible to him, he attended Mass and received communion every day. He had a particular devotion for the adoration of the Holy Sacrament. He used to set up a chapel in which to expose the Sacrament in every place he dwelt, even temporarily in the field or during the war, at the front. Before making important decisions, he used to go to the chapel to ask Lord's assistance.

He had a deeply Christian attitude, regarding marriage and family. Immediately after his ceremony of engagement, he said to his fiancée: "Now we have to help each other in reaching Paradise". In spite all his military and political commitments, he always kept a personal interest in the education of his children, an in particularly in their religious formation.

He deeply respected the limits that the Catholic morals impose in the conduction of military operations. He was completely against submarine war, as practiced at large scale by Germans, because this form of struggle did not make enough distinction between military and civil victims. He opposed resolutely to the bombing of cities and did everything possible to prevent the use of chemical weapons. He was always concerned about the soldiers' material and spiritual welfare, and did he sincerely strived to avoid unnecessary casualties.

As it emerges from the documents of the beatification process, the Blessed Karl I of Austria had a high conception regarding his imperial and regal prerogatives. He was conscious to have received his power directly from God, and for that reason was firmly convinced that he had to exercise it as scrupulously as possible with a great dedication. As he was conscious to rule for God's grace and not for the will of the people, he totally refused the idea that his authority could be based on a plebiscite or on any other form of democratic consultation and then as a consequence he never abdicated. In a letter written to Pope Benedict XV, when he was trying to reestablish his authority in Hungary, he reaffirms how his cause was the cause of religion and underlines that both altar and throne are powers of divine institution, that are called to work together in order to reestablish order, and above all to keep it.

The cause of beatification of Karl I of Austria, is based also on the firmness with which he always rejected any proposal to regain his throne, that would have lead him to enter into compromises with those forces of evil that today prevail everywhere and that are transforming the world into a universal chaos. The answer of Karl I of Austria to whom dared to present him these type of conditions was simple and firm: "About this, as a Catholic Prince, I have nothing to say… now any attempt of mine will fail … Nevertheless it will never happen that I will accept from Satan what has been given to me by God".
In the Emperor Karl of Austria we can see a clear case of monarch that unities in his person the legitimacy of blood and the legitimacy of exercise for his unconditioned adhesion to the Catholic Faith and to the organic and traditional forms of monarchy.

Since the beginning of his reign, he did all possible efforts to achieve a peaceful conclusion of the hostilities. Really he was the only ruler to welcome the different warnings and initiatives of Pope Benedict XV in favor of peace. From his first proclamation published the day after he ascended to the throne, he announced his will to be a father for his subjects and declares openly to be animated by a sincere desire for peace. The Blessed Karl I of Austria sought peace first and foremost for Christian principles, and not for pacifism, tries to stop the "useless carnage" as Benedict XV, defined the terrible human sufferings of this tragic war. Second, for a deep political realism, he realized that the continuation of hostilities would have been fatal for the survival of Austria-Hungary Empire. He saw that the resources of the allies were stronger than the means that central empires had at their disposal. He was also completely conscious that both socialism and communism would have found a propitious climate in countries worn by war. The Emperor observed also how the different nationalist tendencies threatened empire's unity.

It is wrong to think that before war the destiny of Empire was already marked by centrifugal forces operating within Austria-Hungary. Among 1867 and 1914, the Empire enjoyed a climate of prosperity, in spite of the short periods of crisis, that it was manifested in a greater and generally more diffused affluence. The disappearance of Austria-Hungary has to be searched instead in the republican and anticlerical forces connected to masonry that totally refused the peace proposals of the Emperor, because the real aim of these forces was the destruction of this monarchy, because it represented the last Catholic power of importance in the world. Striking Austria-Hungary that was considered by these revolutionary forces the living symbol of the old European civil order, they were trying to destroy both the monarchical principle and Catholicism. They were trying in more than one way to continue the destructive action of French Revolution. This ideological way acting that caused thousands of casualties, can be seen both in French, English, Italian politicians as in the behavior of American politicians. The destruction of the Empire opens a political gap, whose consequences we continue to suffer. We cannot be mono-casuistic, but is evident that one of the main causes of all the tragedies we have suffered during the twentieth century can be traced back to the dissolution of dual monarchy and to the humiliation of Germany. As a consequence of this conflict rise both Nazi dictatorship and Bolshevik Empire, and today we are going toward a democratic dictatorship of a Europe that repudiates its Christian roots and runs the risk of being dominated by Islamic tide.

We rejoice at this beatification for many reasons, but first and foremost because it has been declared by the Church the blessedness of an exemplary man that certainly will intercede for us in Heaven, second because it keeps alive our hope that the Lord will send us Emperors and Kings like him, that will restore the organic and traditional society according to God's will.
This assertion will appear to many persons as anachronistic, nevertheless we have to consider that the Lord is not a distant God who does not intervene directly in men's history for our salvation. This intervention obviously is not limited to help single persons, but it is also manifested for the benefit of human societies, because man is a social being and needs society's assistance to reach his destiny of eternal glory. Normally the Lord does not intervene directly in the history of peoples, but does it through human instruments, men that he chooses to lead His people. So it is not absurd to expect that the Lord will raise up, men full of natural and supernatural talents to lead His people, men with a faith as strong as a rock and a clear and precise vision of how a nation has to be ruled, based on the laws of the Gospel and on the particular traditions of every nation. Is not absurd even to consider that these men should be part of families that for centuries have served the Nation, who have learned by their ancestors that the exercise of authority is first and foremost a service. I do not think either that it would be absurd to pray for the appearance of men of this height, because many graces that God grant us are bound by the fact that we ask them with the most humble of our prayers. We have to ask also to the Lord the grace to be able to discern if a possible leader has been really sent by God, and in that case to follow him with all our strength.

This beatification has been opposed by the same forces that have obstructed the beatification of other great men emblematic of the struggle against the revolution, such as the Blessed Marco D'Aviano, toward which the Emperor had a deep devotion, Saint Pio of Pietrelcina and the Blessed Pious IX. We hope that Holy Father who had the bravery to challenge those forces when he proclaimed those beatifications, would one day, or one of His successors with the same bravery, may rise to the glory of altars the most noble of all the Queens of the world, Isabel of Castile.

Today we ask to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven to plead for us, so that we can see one day the restoration of Christian Society.

May the Lord be praised!

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