[1] His parents, who ran a small dairy farm, were devout and committed Catholics, a minority in a predominantly Calvinist region.

[2][3] From the age of 11, Brandsma pursued his secondary studies in the town of Megen, at a Franciscan run minor seminary for boys considering a priestly or religious vocation.

[2][5] Ordained a priest in 1905, Brandsma was knowledgeable in Carmelite mysticism and was awarded a doctorate of philosophy from Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1909.

[7] In 1919 he founded and for two years acted as head of a secondary school in Oss—the present day Titus Brandsma Lyceum.

[2] After being held prisoner in Scheveningen, Amersfoort, and Cleves, Brandsma was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, arriving there on 19 June.

He died on 26 July 1942, from a lethal injection administered by a nurse[12] of the Allgemeine SS, as part of their program of medical experimentation on the prisoners.

[16] On Sunday, 15 May 2022, in front of more than 50,000 people from around the world, Pope Francis canonized Brandsma[17] and nine other saints at a Mass in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican in Rome.

"It is good to see that, through their evangelical witness, these Saints have fostered the spiritual and social growth of their respective nations and also of the entire human family", the pope said during the Mass.

He offset contemporary Catholicism's negative theological opinion about Judaism with a strong disaffection for any kind of antisemitism in Hitler's Germany.