DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED SACRAMENT
in Austrian royal history and among young Catholics today John-Henry Westen interviewed Theresa Habsburg and Alexander Tschugguel at Voice of the Family’s online conference “Love and reverence due to Our Lord” on 16 July 2020.
Alexander Tschugguel lives in Austria. He first came to public attention by removing the Pachamama idols from the church in Rome during the Vatican synod on the panAmazon region in October 2019. He has since founded the St. Boniface Institute and travels the world to encourage Catholics to take a more active approach to their faith in order to protect the Church from the secular and globalist tendencies. JOHN-HENRY WESTEN: Alexander, can you tell us a little bit about the House of Habsburg and their great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament? ALEXANDER TSCHUGGUEL: Yes, first I should say that as Austrians, especially traditional Catholic Austrians, we all have a deep regard for the House of Habsburg. The family has been Catholic for about a thousand years. They never became Protestant, even though a few of them, unfortunately, tried to turn away from the faith. However, they always remained Catholic and many great Catholics came from the family. The first Habsburg to be the king of the Holy Roman Empire was King Rudolf (1218-1291). Once when he was out hunting, he saw a priest with the Blessed Sacrament on his way to someone who was about to die. The priest was standing by a river and he could not cross without endangering the Holy Sacrament. Rudolf immediately dismounted and gave his horse to the priest. He led the horse, with the priest and the Holy Sacrament, over the river. On the other side, the priest wanted to return the horse to King Rudolf but he said: “I am not worthy to sit on this
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horse again because now this horse has carried Our Lord Almighty”. This is a good story to show the ideas and ideals, which were carried through the centuries by this family. There is another story about the Holy Sacrament and Maximilian (1459-1519), the “last knight” as he is called. Maximilian reigned during the 1500s, just before the Protestant revolution took place, and when he died he wanted his body to be flagellated and to have a picture painted of this scene to be shown to the Austrian people, so that they would always remember that everything passes away, also the Emperor. And that your body, as well as everything earthly, is not the most important. It is more important that you go to heaven. As a sign of his devotion to God, by his testament, King Maximilian ordered his favourite armour, the armour the knight wears in battle, to be put in front of the Holy Sacrament, kneeling, in a church in Innsbruck in Tyrol, so that the people would always see his armour in front of the Holy Sacrament as a reminder that all people who live in this country should do the same. Emperors and kings, if they are good emperors and kings, should always give an example to their people. The third story I would like to share with you is about the last emperor, who everyone knows, Blessed Emperor Karl of Austria. He kept diaries which are very important, especially for the time after his reign. He wrote, for example, that on the ship that brought them to the exile, he and his wife, Empress Zita, asked to bring a priest on board so that they could assist at Holy Mass but they were not allowed to do so. Emperor Karl wrote in his diary that this was one of the most terrible days because until that day, he had been to Mass every day throughout his life. CAL X M A R IA E
