President Bill Clinton once lamented that his time in high office denied him the opportunity for greatness, having governed during America’s holiday from history between the end of the Cold War and before the rise of Islamist jihad as a global force. A great president needs to be tested by great events.
The mere existence of war does not make leaders great. The parade of European leaders in the first decades of the 20th century could be judged failures precisely because they permitted the two world wars to arise. It is only after World War II that we look back with admiration at FDR and Churchill and, even then, avert our eyes from the indispensable role of Stalin’s Red Army in overcoming the Axis.
Roosevelt and Churchill met several times in Canada to plot war strategy. Their first meeting was 75 years ago, in August 1941 in the harbour of Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, which at that time had not yet become part of Canada. In Quebec City, there are monuments at La Citadelle to the two wartime Anglo-American summits held there. On my last visit, standing before the statue of FDR and Churchill, it was impossible not to conclude that it was a long way down to Barack Obama and David Cameron.
This Remembrance Day we might recall that the Armistice of 1918 also marked the end of a reign that was marked by Christian greatness and noble statesmanship. On November 11, 1918, Emperor Charles of Austria, the last of the centuries-old Habsburg dynasty, relinquished all further involvement in affairs of state. The liquidation of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the abolition of its royal house were part of the terms of peace which ended the Great War.
Charles became the heir presumptive to the Habsburg throne upon the assassination of his uncle, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1914, which lit the fuse that led to the explosion of the war. He began that war continuing his service in the imperial armed forces. Upon the death of the old emperor Franz Joseph, Charles acceded to the throne of the dual monarchy 100 years ago, on November 21, 1916.
By the time of his accession, the Great War was more than two years into its bloody slaughter, and Europe’s royal families and parliaments seemed unable to find a path towards peace. Charles was praised for his far-sighted vision, rooted in Catholic social teaching, and his unstinting efforts to achieve peace. He was alone among the leaders of Europe in seriously engaging with the peace proposals of Pope Benedict XV.
A devout Catholic, Charles and the Empress Zita they were models of personal piety and Catholic family life. Charles was raised to the altars in the last beatification ceremony of Pope St John Paul II, in October 2004. Blessed Charles was assigned October 21 as his feast day, the date of his wedding, on which occasion he simply told his bride Zita that it was now their mission to get to heaven together.
In one of those remarkable threads of history, Papa Wojtyła beatified the last commander-in-chief of his father’s army. Wojtyła’s father was a soldier in the Austrian army, as Kraków was part of the Habsburg empire until 1918. November 11 is celebrated in Poland now as Independence Day, the restoration of Poland after 123 years of partition.
The defeat of Austria-Hungary in the Great War meant the end of what Charles regarded to his death as his God-given mission. After unsuccessful attempts to restore the crown, he was exiled with his family to Madeira, where he died in 1922, not even 35, his widow then expecting their eighth child.
Are there important lessons to be learnt from Blessed Charles? He belonged to a royal and imperial age that was obliterated by the Great War, which put an end to the German kaiser and the Russian tsar, as well as the Ottoman Empire. In strict military or political terms, likely not; but upon the centenary of his accession, his witness that leadership and holiness can go together is especially needed today.
Pope Francis welcomed the Habsburg family at the Vatican on Saturday as they made their jubilee year pilgrimage. For the Great Jubilee of 2000, various royal families made the pilgrimage, including Queen Elizabeth II and King Juan Carlos of Spain. The Habsburgs kept that tradition alive this year.
“Charles of Austria was first and foremost a good family father, and as such, a servant of life and peace,” the Holy Father said to some 300 of his descendants. “He had known war, having served as a simple soldier at the beginning of the First World War. Assuming his reign in 1916, and sensitive to the voice of Pope Benedict XV, he did his utmost to promote peace at the cost of being misunderstood and ridiculed. In this too he offers us an example, more relevant than ever, and we can invoke him as an intercessor to obtain from God peace for humanity.”
This Remembrance Day, Blessed Charles ought to be a favoured intercessor.
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