Homily of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn OP at the Beatification Mass of Archbishop Eduard Profittlich, Tallinn, 6 September 2025.
On September 4 – the day before yesterday – a reading took place that lasted nearly twenty-four hours. Only names were read aloud: the names of victims, more than 23,000 in all, who perished in Soviet prison camps or in Siberia. Behind each of those names stood a story, a face, a heart, a person. None of them was nameless before God, anonymous, or merely a number among numbers.
Thanks to the Dominicans, my brothers, for this initiative! Thanks to all who took part in this reading. Above all, thanks be to God himself, who has promised that all these names are written in his hand. In the first reading we heard: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them.” One of those names is often mentioned in these days, one among the 23,000: Archbishop Eduard Profittlich. None of the other victims is forgotten, even if their name was spoken only once during those long hours of remembrance.
I recall a catechesis by Pope Benedict XVI, the last in his series on the saints. It was dedicated to the countless unknown saints whose names are written in the Book of Life, even if they were never formally inscribed in the Church’s calendar. That catechesis has remained unforgettable to me, and today it moves me deeply. Those unknown saints form the deepest foundation of today’s beatification of Archbishop Profittlich. They – the faithful of his Diocese of Tallinn – are the reason he is now raised to the honours of the altar. Because he refused to abandon them, he did not return to Germany, fully aware that this decision would almost certainly lead to his death.
In the early Church, for example in the letters of St Paul, the faithful were called “saints.” For the sake of these saints – for his flock, his sheep – Fr. Profittlich was ready to give his life. He could have found many prudent arguments to avoid this, perhaps to help later as a survivor. The guidance he received from Pope Pius XII came not as a command but as counsel: he should decide “above all with regard to the good of the souls entrusted to him.”
He wrote to his family after deciding: “It is fitting that a shepherd remain with his flock and share with them both joy and sorrow.” How moving is his honesty: “I must say that although this decision required several weeks of preparation, I made it not out of fear or anxiety but with great joy.” This joy shines through the words of St Paul in today’s reading from the Letter to the Romans: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
With this joy of Christ, the archbishop could touch, comfort, and strengthen his faithful – and many others.
A beatification is never about one person alone. Pope Benedict said: “Whoever believes is never alone.” Archbishop Eduard’s decision was carried by the prayers of the faithful for their bishop. One day we shall see and understand how much our own paths were invisibly protected and guided by the prayer and faith of many others. Today’s beatification embraces all who shaped Fr. Eduard’s path – above all the parents of ten children of whom he was the eighth, his teachers, his friends (how essential they are!), and the ecclesial communities and persons who formed him.
Who can ever measure which people, circumstances, and experiences have shaped each of us? It is the entire fabric of grace that makes it possible, in a decisive hour, to pronounce so clear a “yes” to possible martyrdom as Archbishop Profittlich did. It was his personal yes – and yet it is more than that: the Church’s yes to the will of God, spoken through the yes of one individual. Personal holiness is always sustained by the holiness of the Church, the Bride of Christ. That is why today is a day of joy for the Church, especially for the Church in Estonia.
The 23,000 names of victims, among whom our witness of faith is counted, remind us that each life was caught up in a profoundly dramatic time. The act of today’s beatification cannot be separated from what was happening in Europe and the world then: the unimaginable unleashing of the powers of hell – Hitler in Germany, Stalin in the Soviet Union. Their pact to divide the spoils in what was perhaps the most insane war ever fought. Scarcely was the loot divided before one thief turned on the other to seize it all: “Today Germany is ours, tomorrow the whole world.” The concentration camps and the Gulag were the ultimate expression of contempt for humanity.
What a contrast, then, is the dignity with which Archbishop Profittlich surrendered himself to the NKVD officers. Faith gave him that calm and steadfastness. As one among millions of victims of those two murderous ideologies, he died on February 22, 1942.
The beatification of Archbishop Eduard Profittlich takes place at a time when old wounds threaten to reopen. In this part of the world, that concern is especially tangible. War has once again become a bitter part of daily life; hopes for peace are severely tested. Nor is this the only crisis in today’s world. Pope Francis has often said that we are living through “a third world war fought in pieces.” That war also includes the worldwide persecution of Christians. Other religions, too, suffer localized persecutions and the nationalist misuse of religion – yet the persecution of Christians remains by far the largest in scope.
In this situation, the witness of the blessed martyr-bishop takes on special meaning. In his homeland, Germany, the systematic persecution of the Jews was already raging, soon to spread across the occupied East. The illusion that either National Socialism or Soviet Communism would spare Christians quickly proved false. All this can repeat itself in our own time. That is why Archbishop Profittlich’s attitude is so precious today: it shows the way of the Christian in times of persecution.
Two statements of Eduard Profittlich have touched me deeply. They are filled with the consolation and joy that only God himself can give. After deciding not to return to Germany, he wrote:
“I do this with the greatest willingness; indeed, I can say, with great joy. Even though I cannot foresee how my life will now unfold or what sacrifices may await me, I walk this path with great trust in God, firmly convinced that if God walks with me, I will never be alone. And I have firm hope that the sacrifice I offer here for the cause of God’s Kingdom will, in one way or another, not be without fruit.”
The early Christians said: sanguis martyrum – semen christianorum! “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians.” This hope, which filled Fr. Profittlich, may fill us all – in an age marked by so many new martyrs. I recall the great project of St John Paul II for the Jubilee Year 2000: to compile a martyrology of the 20th century. A team of historians worked intensely; after 20,000 short biographies, they stopped – there were simply too many. God alone knows all their names!
Yes, we may hope that the countless martyrs of our time, and the 23,000 victims whose names have now been read, as Bishop Eduard said of himself, “will not be without fruit.” This we ask of God today, with the same trust that filled him then.
Much has been said of martyrdom. What already fascinated people about the early Christians was their joy. In today’s Gospel, a passage from Jesus’ prayer in the Upper Room, he asks the Father for this great gift: “Now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”
This prayer of Jesus was fulfilled abundantly in the life of Fr. Eduard, Archbishop Profittlich: “When it finally became clear that I should stay, my joy was so great that I prayed a Te Deum in thanksgiving. I felt God’s grace working in my soul so strongly that I have rarely felt so happy in my life as on the evening after that decision, and I have never celebrated Holy Mass so devoutly as on the day of the decision.”
We now celebrate the Holy Mass in which Eduard Profittlich is mentioned for the first time in the Eucharistic Prayer.
May he obtain for us from Christ, whom he followed faithfully, the joy of Christ – his joy in its fullness!
Amen.