In my parish, we have the enormous privilege of being able to attend Mass almost every morning. Because it is so regular we often tend to forget what a privilege this is, and even take it for granted. Sometimes you have to be jolted out of your comfort zone to remember that Mass, the “source and summit of the Christian life”, is denied to millions of Catholics in other parts of the world. And if this is the case for a layperson like me, how much more so is it the case for an ordained priest.
I make these remarks as I have just been reading The Priest Barracks: Dachau, 1938-1945 by a French journalist, Guillaume Zeller (Ignatius Press). He relates the story of Dachau, the first concentration camp to be built – in 1933, outside Munich – where, uniquely in the concentration camp system, there were three designated “priests’ barracks”: numbers 26, 28 and 30. In all, 2,579 priests, monks and seminarians from Germany and all over Occupied Europe were imprisoned there between 1938 and 1945. Of this number, 1,034 died there.
