www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Blessed Karl

I though that it was worth mentioning that Blessed Karl, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary was beatified on 10/3. It is my understanding that both he and his wife Empress Zita were very good to the Greek Catholic Church in the Austrian/Hungarian Empire.

Empress Zita was at the installation of Bp Daniel Ivancho in Pittsburgh in 1950. It is said that she received communion at the altar. Anyone care to confirm or deny this report?

Thanks

Anastasios

Yes, I have seen pictures of this. The Emperor and Empress of Austria were extended the same privelege the Byzantine Emperor and Empress were given.

I think that's kind of cool

I have always found the similarities between Karl and Nicholas II interesting. They were both astoundingly good and holy men, yet it seems as if Hell itself was arrayed against them.

I think Emperess Zita was responsible for the release from prison of Cardinal Tarpouni the Patriarch of the Syrian Rite during WWI. Upon his release he fled to the safety of the mountains in Lebanon.

I hope they move his body in to the family vault in Vienna. Emeress Zita is the only one of the family in the particular room under the church where they are all buried.

Metropolitan Andrew was close to Blessed Charles, and after being released from prison and coming to Rome, Patriarch Joseph kept in contact with Empress Zita (whose beatification is also in the pipeline). Blessed Charles, pray for us!
Incognitus

Dear Friends:

For anyone who is interested,

I have a number of Holy cards commemorating the Beatification of Karl of Austria.

If you send me your addresses I will be more than happy to mail you one or more.

Sincerely
Jose J. Lopes

my email number is defreitas_lopes@hotmail.com

Dear Jose,

Thank you very much for your great kindness in sending me the cards you did.

They will be put to good use, I can assure you!

I'll have every monarchist this side of the 49th parallel using them.

Perhaps the monarchists to the south of us will follow suit as well!

Alex

I remember the story - and I do not promise my memory is always historically accurate - of the Emperor Franz Joseph meeting Teddy Roosevelt. When Teddy asked Franz Joseph "what do you do?" The Emperor replied, "I protect my people from the government." We could use a little protection from our government, at times.

Here's the website for Blessed Karl's beatification http://www.beatificationemperorcharles.info/, and while I'm a staunch believer in the constitutional republican form of government, I readily admit that we often have legally elected scoundrels, and that not every monarch is a Saul, Ahaz, Herod, Ivan IV or Henry VIII.

Don't know why the link isn't working, but that site is up and that address is correct.

Drop the comma at the end.

http://www.beatificationemperorcharles.info/

--tim

Dear Friends:

As I understand, the Feast Day for the Blessed Karl is October 21st.

The interesting thing about this is that the date does not commemorate his birth or death but his wedding.

The Hapsburg family requested that his Feast should be honoured on that day.

We may yet see the pious servant of God Zita of Bourbon-Parma & Hapsburg also glorified.


Sincerely
defreitas

"Inasmuch as Austria, beside France, for some centuries had excercised a sort of patronage for the Catholic Christians of the Ottoman Empire, the Servant of God Karl of Austria also, at least once, had occasion of effectively exercising such "right." Because of a false accusation of high treason, Mons. Gabriel Tappouni, from 1929 Patriarch of Antioch for the Syrians of the ancient rite and, in 1935, first Syrian cardinal (d. 1965), and other priests of high rank of the Syrian Catholic Church were imprisoned and condemned to death. Unable to interfere personally in the affairs of a foreign country, the emperor had his consort Zita write a letter of supplication in favor of the condemned directly to the Sultan Mehmet V who then freed the condemned innocents.3"

3 Wilhelm de Vries, S.J., Haus Oesterreich und die Ostkirchen, in: Jahrbuch der Gebetsliga 1960, pp. 34-45; pp. 35 sg.

(From the document Il Servo di Dio Carlo d�Austria e i cristiani dell�Orient by Father Ambrozio Eszer.)


"At the invitation of the new Bishop, Empress Zita of the former Austro-Hungarian empire and her daughter, Archduchess Elizabeth, occupied places in the sanctuary." (Kalendar' Sojedinenija 1947, pg. 113)


"One touch of old-world splendor was added to the scene by the presence in the sanctuary, near the monsignori, of the former Empress Zita of Austria and her daughter, the Archduchess Elizabeth* Bishop Ivancho was born in the province of Podcarpathian Ruthenia while that province was still a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

*The Empress, in occupying a place within the sanctuary, was exercising an ancient traditional privilege of her house."

From The Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Byzantine Episcopal Consecration by Clement C. Englert, C.SS.R., 1946, pg. 372