Royal shoes are not light footwear. They are not easy for anyone who wears them. Even Charles I of Habsburg was uncomfortable when he took them from the dying Emperor Franz Joseph in 1917, amidst the blizzard of the Great War. He never thought he would sit on the royal throne, for he was only fifth in line, not even after a nun had predicted to him as a boy, with stigmata, that he would one day be supreme ruler. From the very beginning of his reign, he was committed to ending the war and making peace, but the wheel of violence turned so wildly that no one listened to him.
A similar feeling of not being listened to was shared by the peoples within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy who, at the end of the war, decided to go their own way, showing the door to the Habsburgs and thus to Charles. Charles made two more attempts to at least occupy the Hungarian throne, but in the end had to flee with his family to Madeira in Portugal. He died four years after the First World War in a miserable mountain hut. Although he was called a “degenerate desperado” by some at the time of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, most people recognised his extraordinary humanity, imbued with a Christian social sense. After two miracles, he is currently in the process of being made a saint.
The birth of Archduke Charles on 17 August 1887 did not raise much dust at the Austrian court, as he was only fifth in line to the royal throne, but it brought all the more joy to his father Otto and mother Maria of Saxony. The family lived in Persenbeug Castle, midway between Vienna and Linz, but their favourite place to stay was the then very modern Villa Wartholz in Reichenau (between Vienna and Graz). Karl was only two years old when the first of the many family tragedies that followed struck the dynasty. Prince Rudolf and his mistress Maria Vetsera were courting each other in the hunting lodge. The case was highly publicised and people talked for a long time about conspiracy theories that the Hungarian assassins were behind it.
Rudolf’s suicide was a great blow to his father Franz Joseph, perhaps even an embarrassment. He therefore got the doctors to declare him insane, which is said to be what ultimately led to the act. In any case, Joseph built a Carmelite convent on the site of the hunting lodge in Mayerling, and the Carmelite sisters there still pray for the poor souls of the tragic couple.
With Rudolf’s death, the line to the throne in relation to Charles was reduced by one. Before him, Charles Louis (Franz Joseph’s brother), Franz Ferdinand (Charles’s uncle) and Otto (Charles’s father) were all entitled to it.
Karl’s parents hired a teacher, Artur Tormassy, at a very early age and for the next nine years he taught little Karl the Hungarian language. The language was difficult and the young man’s nose was often wrinkled as a result, but later, when he became politically active, he proved to be a very good student.
Another milestone in Karl’s youth came in Sopron (today in Hungary), where he was taken in by the Ursuline Vincencia Fauland. From the age of 16, she had stigmata, but also the gift of insight into the future. She said to his parents: “Pray a lot for him, because he will become a supreme ruler and will suffer a lot. The devil will test him.”
From that moment on, a group of other Ursulines prayed for young Charles – until his death and beyond.
In 1896, when Charles was nine years old, his grandfather Charles Louis, brother of Franz Joseph and first in line to the throne, died. The unmarried Franz Ferdinand became heir to the throne, followed by Otto and little Charles. Barely two years later, a new tragedy struck the court: an anarchist stabbed Elisabeth of Bavaria, better known as Sisi, Franz Joseph’s wife, at Lake Geneva. From today’s perspective, she would be a match for Princess Diana, who also had an artistic fashion style and ended her life in tragedy.
In 1899, after several years of private education, Charles crossed the threshold of an educational establishment in Vienna. This was also the time when Prince Franz Ferdinand, who seemed destined to remain an “uncle”, finally met the love of his life – Countess Sophie of Bohemia. The couple were head over heels in love, so he did not hear the Emperor’s remarks that Sophie was unsuitable for marriage because she was not of royal blood. Ferdinand persisted and in the end he was only allowed to marry, but with the caveat that Sophie would never be a princess and their children would never be heirs to the throne.
In the meantime, Charles’s father fell ill with what was then incurable syphilis. This meant that he began to deteriorate physically and mentally. Developments (Ferdinand’s lack of offspring and his father’s terminal illness) suggested that Charles would eventually ascend the royal throne. Cita – support and encouragement
When it became clear that Charles would one day become Emperor of Austria, he was immediately pulled out of the Viennese school, as it would have been inappropriate for the future Emperor to compete with the other schoolchildren. Private home schooling followed. At the age of eighteen, he donned a military dress and went to Bilina in Bohemia as a dragoon (cavalryman). His military upbringing and the intertwining of honour and faith left a very strong imprint on him, which has never let go. During this time, his father Otto died at the age of 48.
The following year, Karl went to university in Prague, where he studied, among other things, law, history and economics, which was very important for his control of the throne. He studied privately with the best Czech and German professors. His results were very good, as he was a diligent student. He lived in Bohemia for six years.
Meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was boiling. Franz Joseph could barely tame the bubbling nationalism. The Hungarians wanted more and more independence, and at the same time sought to Hungarianise the foreign national communities in their territory, while on the other hand, in the Austrian half, there were constant demands for more political decision-making from the Germans, Czechs, Italians, Slovenes, Croats, Poles and Ruthenians (Ukrainians).
Franz Joseph had to exert all his strength and make complex compromises to keep a lid on this bubbling soup. He believed that the monarchy could not be subjected to major national reforms, as this would trigger a domino effect or its end.
His heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, was not of the same mind. He disliked the Hungarians, but he insisted on a radical reconstruction of the monarchy, both in the internal sphere and in foreign policy, otherwise the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would follow. He gathered around him advisers who developed various ideas. One of these was, for example, a kind of united state of Greater Austria, whereby the empire would be divided into 15 or more ethnic states. Another idea was that the Great Leader could be crowned not only in Vienna and Budapest, but also in Bohemia and Zagreb.
These ideas did not suit the nationalist Hungarians, but they suited the Slavs all the more. He also thumbed his nose at German integration and wanted more contact with France. The two Frenchmen’s views on the future of the monarchy were thus miles apart.
According to the rules and the agreement, any future children of Franz Ferdinand would not have been able to occupy the throne. Therefore, Charles would have to take care of the continuation of the line, and the search for a wife began. To satisfy the rules, royal blood had to flow through the bride’s veins.
The occasion came in 1909 at the Kurhaus in Franzenbad (Frantiskovy Lazne), where he met Cita of Bourbon-Parma, a descendant of the exiled King of Portugal. When he asked for her hand in marriage three years later, Franz Joseph was relieved that the Habsburg branch would continue.
Cita, according to the old custom, had to go to Rome to seek the Pope’s blessing before the wedding. Pope Pius X first celebrated Mass for her and her family and finally received her in a private audience. There he explained to her that he was very much looking forward to their marriage and also had high expectations of her. “Charles is a gift from heaven,” he told her.
As the conversation continued, he spoke of Charles as emperor, but Cita reminded him that he was not yet ruler and that he was only second in line. But the Pope waved his hand, saying he would soon be ruler. Cita remained firm: “I don’t think so, because Franz Ferdinand will certainly not resign.” The Pope added: “I don’t know … Maybe it won’t be a question of resignation.”
These words of his haunted her for a long time, until they were vindicated by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
The wedding took place in the chapel of Schwarzau Castle. A huge crowd of Habsburgs and Bourbons gathered and even a film camera immortalised them. The atmosphere was very joyful, even the iron Franz Joseph showed a smiling face under his famous moustache.
Charles was dressed in the uniform of the dragoons and Cita in a white satin dress with Bourbon lilies and a wreath on her head, planted there by Franz Joseph. After the Mass, the toast and the banquet, the young couple first went to the church in Mariazell (Carinthia), where they proposed to Mary (Magni Mater Austriae), to whom the Empire has been consecrated several times in history, and then “escaped” for their honeymoon in Dalmatia, on the island of Lokrum near Dubrovnik.
After their marriage, they settled in Bohemia, and in 1912 travelled with dragoons to Galicia, where their first-born son, Otto, was born.
Franz Joseph had two great gifts for the newlyweds. He promoted Karl to Major, which led to his transfer to the 34th Infantry, which was stationed in Vienna. To give the young family a place to live, he gave them the castle of Hatzendorf, near the Imperial Palace of Schönbrunn.
Balkan Cauldron
Franz Ferdinand was a man who loved to travel. This also enabled him to make contact with foreign diplomats and representatives of royal families and governments, which would come in handy later on. His paths often led him to the Conservative British Court. One can only imagine what these connections would have meant for the history of mankind had he not fallen victim to the assassin’s bullets.
Franz Ferdinand had suspected that something was about to happen for some time. Princess Cita later recalled that the heir to the throne visited her and Charles on the evening of May 1914. In their conversation, he confided to Karl that he had a premonition that he was going to be killed. Charles shook his head in disbelief. “I’m not joking, the crypt for my body in Arstetten is ready,” replied the heir to the throne.
But who would want to get rid of him? There were many candidates. From the Pan-Germans who wanted to annex Austria to Germany, which the heir to the throne resisted, to the Slav nationalists who feared that the arrival of the young Franz Ferdinand would push their dreams of a homeland of their own into the distant future. He had known that he would have to go to Bosnia since 1913, when he was ordered to see military exercises in June 1914. Since he was acting in a military capacity, he was able to take his wife Sophie, whom he would not otherwise have been allowed to take if it was a royal matter.
On the way there, Ferdinand was already plagued by bad premonitions. It was as if something wanted to show that it was better for them to stay at home: the parlour car was overheating, so they had to disconnect it and leave it behind. Further down the route, the electricity went out and they had to light the carriages with candles. Franz Ferdinand remarked that it was as if they were going to a funeral.
But it was not only his words that were prescient, but Bishop Joseph Lanyi of Hungary had a similar vision. In the days before the heir to the throne’s arrival in Sarajevo, he had a sinister dream that he had received a black-bordered letter with a photograph of Franz Ferdinand in a vehicle with two assailants rushing towards it and firing at His Highness. He described his dream in a letter and immediately sent it to the heir to the throne, but unfortunately it was too late.
The next day it happened. It was 28 June 1914. On that day, millions of people around the world died along with Franz Ferdinand. Ferdinand’s fate was as Mother Vincent Fauland, the future saint Pope Pius X, Franz Ferdinand and Bishop Lanyi had predicted.
With the death of Franz Ferdinand, Charles became the first in line for the imperial crown. He had little time to prepare. A telegram from Sarajevo reached Franz Joseph in Bad Ischl. He was horrified and said: “Over and over again … Over and over … It’s terrible. It’s as if all the sadness wanted to cling to me.”
Whether true or not, one of the ironies of the July crisis is that Foreign Minister Leopold von Berchtold and the Commander-in-Chief of the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces, Conrad von Hoetzendorf, were given virtually unlimited power. The assassinated heir to the throne despised them and planned to depose them. Now they had a free hand and their vision was: war.
This was not such a rare word in those days, because in every European country there was a group of people inciting people to war against a neighbouring nation. Some were driven by nationalism, others by social unrest (a socialist movement was emerging), others felt that Europe had lived in peace for too long.
They fondly recalled the uniforms and accolades of the Napoleonic Wars a hundred years earlier. Probably no one, neither the highest authorities, nor the army, nor the beggars on the street, imagined what modern warfare would bring. Franz Joseph responded to the exhortations to war: “Those who want war have no idea what war is.”
Austria-Hungary gave Serbia an ultimatum with a list of obligations. It agreed to them in full, except for the cooperation of the Austrian authorities on Serbian soil in an independent investigation of the assassination.
Britain tried mediation, but in vain. German Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas also tried, but were overruled by Parliament. In the end, however, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, triggering a domino effect: Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary, Germany on Russia, France on Germany, etc.
And what place did Charles occupy in this madness? Although he was heir to the throne, no one asked his opinion. He was aloof from decisions and the course of events. He himself was strongly against the war: “I am a soldier in body and soul, but I cannot understand how someone who sees his relatives going to the front loves war!”.
For him, too, war meant having to put on a military dress. Before leaving, he told Citi: “I am leaving with a heavy heart, because when the war is over, there will be no more Austro-Hungary as I know it.”
The Archduke first joined the army in Przemysl, and then was transferred to Vienna, where he was the ruler’s liaison with the regiments. He visited them tirelessly in the field and reported on them to Franz Joseph.
Two years after the outbreak of the war, the long-serving Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria died on 21 November 1916. Suddenly, a huge responsibility fell on Karl’s 29-year-old shoulders. Because he had been distanced from decision-making until then, he did not have the circle of political allies that Franz Ferdinand had, for example. He therefore had to hastily assemble a group of political allies to cope with the situation and lead the monarchy down the path of peace and reorganisation.
After some initial setbacks, he took over the post of Commander-in-Chief of the army himself, and made Count Henrik Clam-Martinic and István Tisza Prime Ministers. The Hungarians were his greatest antipode within the monarchy, and he decided to crown himself with their crown of St Stephen, which meant a great deal to the Hungarians, who placed a great deal of value on tradition. He hoped that this would at least calm passions a little.
The royal couple arrived in Budapest on 27 December and the official ceremony took place three days later at St. Matthias Church, presided over by Cardinal Czernoch. They entered the church to the sound of drums, trumpets and church bells. During the ceremony, Cardinal Charlemagne handed over to Charles the sword of St Stephen, with which the King “sliced” the air in three directions to show that he was willing to defend the Church and the State.
The crown of St Stephen was then placed on his head, followed by the presentation of the sceptre and the globe with the cross. Only then did the Cardinal lower him to the royal throne. A few minutes later, after going through a similar ceremony, Cita joined him as Queen of Hungary. At that moment, church bells rang throughout the country, announcing the good news that Hungary had a new king.
Most people want peace
In the midst of a terrible war, Charles made it his most sacred duty as King to strive for peace. It was not easy, for he was in the grip of internal turmoil, fuelled by misery and nationalism, and with it suspicion, sometimes even hatred, of other nations within the monarchy.
The military authorities therefore saw a potential traitor in every Czech, Serbian, Polish and Ukrainian soldier. They were persecuted for petty offences, and many found themselves behind bars for “everyday” offences.
Charles found this repressive approach unacceptable, as it added fuel to the fire of nationalism and hastened the disintegration of the monarchy. On 2 July 1917, he therefore carried out a mass amnesty, releasing over 2 000 prisoners who had been accused of disturbing public order, insulting the royal family and so on.
Despite this move, nationalism did not abate. The population became increasingly suspicious, believing that the state was using them to achieve its own ends, while ignoring their needs and objectives.
Charles then tried to calm the situation through Germany. But it was not easy for them, because Emperor William II did not have much power, and he was a supporter of Pan-Germanism, in the context of which he saw Austria as part of the German empire. Charles wondered why his predecessors had not allied themselves with France, Great Britain or perhaps even Russia.
But now it was what it was. Germany’s intention to isolate Britain by submarine attacks also seemed unwise. Such isolation, Charles thought, would quickly draw the US into the war. Indeed, on 6 April 1917, the latter declared war on Germany, but not yet on Austria-Hungary, because it had not taken part in the submarine attacks.
Meanwhile, the situation in the Empire was getting worse by the day. The people were hungry as hell, the soldiers were tired to death. Charles once again warned the German Emperor that an armistice had to be concluded, otherwise “… it will be made by the people through our crowned heads”. But the Emperor only replied, “Don’t worry, time is working for us.”
In Italy, too, the situation was very bad. General Luigi Cadorna, who commanded the Italian army on the Austrian front, thought that a separate armistice with Austria-Hungary was the solution, because of the exhaustion of his men. He wrote to the Austrian military attaché in Switzerland that they were ready for an armistice if they got part of Trentino. But Charles did not give much in response to this proposal, hoping that the governments of the Entente Powers would talk to Italy.
So why didn’t Charles offer an Austrian armistice himself? Because he knew that the Hungarians would pull with the Germans, who, in the shadow of Pan-Germanic aspirations, would annex Austria to their empire. In the meantime, however, some German generals came up with another idea that was even worse for Charles than the submarine warfare. When Nicholas II was overthrown in Russia, a provisional government of Alexander Kerensky reigned, refusing to end the war. So the Germans proposed to import from Switzerland to Russia on a sealed train the Russian left-wing radical Vladimir Lenin, who argued that Russia should have an armistice.
As Cita later wrote, Charles strongly opposed this because he did not think it was fair to the Russian people, who would suffer a great deal more and would find it difficult to find an interlocutor for a peace treaty. After all, he thought there was a serious danger that communism would spread from there to other parts of the world.
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A patient was dying
In the autumn of 1917, two events occurred which at first sight looked positive and encouraging for Austria-Hungary, but in the long run proved not to be true. The first was the retreat of the Italians behind the Pijava River, which gave the Austrian forces a great deal of optimism. The second event was the revolution in Russia, where Lenin took power and withdrew from the war. This freed up around half a million soldiers on the Eastern Front, which could now be used for the Western Front.
The common denominator of both events was that the USA feared that the Western Front would collapse, so it declared war on Austria-Hungary. The fresh American strength quickly relativised the Western Front, though numerically strengthened, but also very tired. Charles then wrote for the first time to US President Woodrow asking for an armistice, but he refused.
When the front in the Balkans gave way, both Germany and Austria-Hungary asked for an armistice. Austria wrote that it would reform the system and expressed the hope that the US would give it enough time to do so. The US did not respond to this initiative either.
So Charles issued a special manifesto, addressing the nations within the monarchy to sort out the federal system. But because the document was so vague, the nations rejected it. The newspaper Slovenec, for example, wrote at the time that such a course of action was as unwise as writing prescriptions for a headache while the patient was dying.
To calm the situation, Charles also declared Croatia a third kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But the Americans considered the manifesto late and insufficient. The Entente forces launched one last major offensive, bringing Austria-Hungary to its knees.
On 27 October 1918, Charles telegraphed the Emperor that he would demand a separate armistice within 24 hours. The days that followed saw the nations within the monarchy begin to declare their independent state formations. On 30 October, the Vienna Assembly also established the state of German Austria and elected a government called the Staatsrat (State Council). Hungary also decided to go the independent route, electing Karolyi as the first President of the Republic.
The nations were in turmoil, with many newspapers venting their anger on the King. The leading liberal newspaper in Slovenia, Jutro, described Charles as a “degenerate desperado”, while the Catholic Slovenec said that the Habsburgs were an unfortunate and decaying family that had not produced any talent for two centuries.
In Austria, a hungry mob, backed by members of the Communist movement, demanded the monarch’s resignation. Field Marshal Borojevic sent a proposal to Charles to use his troops to stop the revolution, but the document was “miraculously” lost in the chain of command and did not reach the Emperor. The government palace of Schönbrunn, which had been guarded by Hungarian soldiers until then and was now gone, remained unguarded. Fortunately for Charles, the cadets of the military academy took over the guard.
Meanwhile, the leadership of the new Austrian state had milked Karl’s resignation under the nose. He accepted the transfer of political decision-making to new political bodies and elected individuals, but refused to step down from the throne. He did the same with the Hungarian delegation, which had come for the same purpose.
Charles knew that his days were numbered. The revolutionary ferment in Vienna was so strong that he feared for his family, especially knowing what the revolutionaries had done to the Russian royal family of the Romanovs. He and his closest staff retreated to Eckertsau Castle, but even there they were not entirely safe.
The King of England saw their plight and sent to their aid Lieutenant Edward Lisle Strutt, who provided basic security and food supplies to the castle from the British army’s stores.
The socialist Karl Renner, who took over the reins of the new Austrian state, gave Charles three options: either he renounced all the privileges of the royal family and lived in Austria like any other citizen; if he refused to resign, he was to be exiled; if he refused to resign or leave, he was to be imprisoned.
Charles hesitated, but then, at the urging of the British lieutenant Strutt, agreed to leave. Renner wanted to make a thorough inspection of the family before they left, to make sure that they had not taken anything with them, but Strutt looked so happy that the intention was abandoned.
Renner then tried one last time to pressure Charles to resign as King or he would not be allowed out of Austria, which Strutt found a bit too much and threatened that if he did not stop, the British would withhold all food arriving as British aid in Vienna. Renner then just gave in.
Karl and Cita boarded the train and waved one last time. “Goodbye, my friends!”
They drove to Switzerland to Lake Geneva to the Villa Prangins.
One last try
Meanwhile, in April 1919, Renner pushed through Parliament the “Habsburg Law”, which did not allow Habsburgs to set foot on Austrian soil unless they renounced their hereditary rights and swore allegiance to the Republic. At the same time, the law abolished titles of nobility.
Just as in Austria they had drifted away from the monarchy and were now and then drifting towards the left-wing option, the situation in Hungary was much worse. White Kun set up a communist experiment which was ruthless towards the peasants. An opposition government was quickly formed in Szeged, which contacted Karl and the Romanian soldiers. Karl’s supporters in the opposition government, with the help of these Romanian soldiers, then drove out the White Kuna and invaded Budapest.
Officially, Hungary was still a monarchy, with Admiral Horthy, who was considered to be a supporter of Charles, as regent – until the “real” king took the throne. He invited him to come to Hungary, but the problem was that the successor states of Austria-Hungary – Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland – had formed a small Entente under French patronage. They wanted to block Soviet expansion into Central Europe, to act as a counterweight to Germany and to prevent the restoration of the Habsburg kingdom.
In practice, this meant that Charles’s route to Hungary had to be secret and carefully thought out. But by the time Charles made his way to Budapest, Horthy had already changed his mind, fearing the reaction of the “little Entente”. He did have about 1500 men at his disposal who could easily have taken Budapest, but they would certainly have been no match for the armies of the little Entente.
Disappointed, Charles had no choice but to say goodbye and return to Switzerland. Later he tried again, but due to betrayals within his own ranks, this attempt to reach Hungary also failed miserably. This second attempt to seize the Hungarian throne resulted in Charles and his wife Cita being put on a British ship on the Danube and sent to Constantinople and then via Gibraltar to Madeira in Portugal.
The transport was “honoured” by Great Britain, but at the destination the question quickly arose as to who would pay for the family’s stay in their new homeland. In 1921, the Paris Peace Conference concluded that the family would need around £20,000,000 a year to live a normal life, which would be around €1.5 million today. This was a very generous amount. But who is going to pay for it?
They imposed a contribution on the successor states of the monarchy: Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, each of £5000 a year, and they would have to pay it to Portugal. There was only one drawback to the agreement, and that was that these countries did not want to do it.
This left Charles’s family with no income. There was the possibility of financing themselves from the family jewels, which in November 1918 were entrusted to an Austrian resident of Switzerland, Bruno Steiner, and deposited in a bank in Zurich. He soon sold some of them so that Cita and Karel could finance their venture into Hungary. But when they tried to contact him after arriving in Madeira, there was no sign of him and no sign of the jewels. Neither he nor the jewels were ever found again.
Their life savings were thus soon wiped out, and fortunately a local banker offered them a mountain hut, but it had no electricity, no hot water and very little food. The damp and cold environment took such a toll on Karl’s health that he contracted bronchitis and later pneumonia. Lack of food, poor living conditions and pneumonia paved the way for the end of his domestic life.
He died on 1 April 1922. Word of his death soon spread among the locals and they began to flock to his coffin in droves. Some touched the corpse with rosaries or pictures of Charles, others even kissed it. Three days after his death, a funeral followed, attended by several thousand people.
St. Charles the Saint
At the beginning of this article, we wrote about how, as a boy, Charles visited Sopron (today in Hungary), where the Ursuline Vincencia Fauland predicted his imperial future, and at the same time a prayer group was founded, “Kaiser Karl Gebetsliga fuer den Voelkerfrieden”, or Gebetsliga for short.
Although they prayed throughout the years of his life, prayer did not cease after his death. What is more, it even intensified. It is not known how many people were in the group before Karl’s death, but we do know that after his death the number of members increased sharply. Through Gebetsliga, a request was made to William Milas, a member of the Christian Social Party and later President of Austria, to initiate the process of Karl’s beatification. He agreed and took the proposal to Cardinal Piffl in Vienna.
Gebetsliga played an outstanding role in establishing and nurturing the “cult” of Charles, not only in religious terms, but in terms of popularisation. Initially, prayer groups were formed in the countries of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy, but later also in France, Italy, England, Belgium, the Netherlands and, of course, Madeira, where he was considered “our saint”. In 1938, the organisation had around 25,000 members worldwide.
What was the reason for the tendency to declare Charles a saint? First and foremost, his commitment to the Christian faith and his involvement in political decisions, and his prominent role in mediating for peace during the war, especially after 1917. During his short reign, he articulated Catholic social doctrine and laid down juridico-social foundations that are still partly in force today.
At the time of his death, the Slovenian media, which until then had uncompromisingly slammed him because they felt he was not up to the task as a ruler, agreed that he was a very special man. But at the same time, Slovenski narod wrote: “As a human being, Karel was, and we acknowledge this even as opponents, a good, noble man who deserved a better fate. But all the sins that the Habsburg family had heaped on their shoulders over the long centuries fell on him, he had to atone for the sins of all his ancestors, and this atonement was therefore difficult because it corresponded to the gravity of the sins committed. A tragic fate, undeserved for him as a man …”
The Second World War delayed the beginning of the beatification process until 1949. It is well known that the Catholic Church declares a person blessed when a miracle is performed through his intercession, and a saint when a second miracle occurs. The procedure also involves opening the coffin of the deceased to examine the corpse and to take parts of the clothes or body for later relics. The decomposition of the corpse is also examined under the watchful eyes of ecclesiastical experts. It is not uncommon to find the corpse virtually intact, which is a unique indication of the sanctity of the deceased.
Charles’s tomb in Madeira was opened in 1972, on the 25th anniversary of his death. His corpse was surprisingly well preserved, especially considering that the window of the coffin was broken and the tropical humidity was seeping in.
The basis for the beatification of Charles was a miracle that took place in Brazil in the 1960s. A nun there, Maria Cita Gradowski from Poland, had severe problems with painful legs. The disease progressed to the point that she ended up bedridden. Several unsuccessful operations followed, which could be said to have caused more pain than relief.
One of her sisters suggested that she pray to Charles of Habsburg. The patient replied that she would rather go to someone “more famous”. But the pain did not subside, it increased. Finally, in desperation, she recommended herself to Charles and asked for his intervention with God.
The next day she woke up in perfect health. Because she worked in a hospital, her testimony was very well documented and was witnessed by many doctors and nurses. None of them had an explanation as to how this could have happened.
On 3 October 2004, Karl was beatified in a solemn ceremony. Pope John Paul II, at the time of the proclamation, said that Karl had always followed the voice of God and involved him in the governance of the empire. In doing so, he laid the foundations for a social sense that had hardly existed before him. “Let him be an example to us all, but especially to those who have political responsibilities in Europe.”
His proclamation attracted a great deal of attention, including the presence of Victor Emmanuel IV, grandson of the Italian king who reigned at the same time as Charles, and Prince Pavel Karadjordjevic, representing the Serbian royal family. Such an endorsement by his former opponents was considered by many to be a unique testimony to the greatness of his life.
After the beatification, a second miracle took place, this time in the USA. A couple travelling in Austria met Charles’s grandson, Karl Peter of Habsburg. Apparently they got on so well that he invited them to Rome in 2004 for the beatification of his grandfather. There, they also distributed among the guests a printed prayer of the novena, which the couple, on their arrival home in the USA, presented to a family friend whose mother was bedridden in Florida with breast cancer.
The condition was very serious, as the malignant tissue had spread to her liver and bones. In great distress, the patient began to pray the prayer mentioned above and was soon joined by many other believers. Within a few days, she was healed and out of bed. The medical profession had no idea how this could have happened, as she was already in the grave with one leg. The second miracle fulfilled the conditions for Charles’s canonisation and canonisation as a saint.
Finally, Cita, who died in March 1989 at the age of 96, has also been in the process of being recognised as a saint since 2009. According to the World Wide Web, she has since then been entitled Servant of God. They are still waiting for a miracle …
