EWTN News reports (January 28, 2026) on efforts to canonize Jan Ruff-O’Herne, a Dutch-Australian woman who survived Japanese military sexual slavery during WWII. The article emphasizes her “heroic capacity for forgiveness” and “deep faith” while undergoing atrocities, with retired Adelaide priest Roderick O’Brien promoting her cause. It describes her post-war life as a teacher, wife, caregiver, and activist campaigning for recognition of “comfort women,” culminating in her alleged spiritual triumph through forgiving one of her abusers.
Naturalistic Distortion of Sanctity
The article reduces Catholic holiness to therapeutic resilience and social activism, stating Ruff-O’Herne became “a model for all kinds of people; people who have suffered rape… refugees, migrants, teachers, carers, spouses, advocates.” This echoes the cult of man condemned by Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), which warned of modernists replacing supernatural virtues with “humanitarian aspirations.” Where the Church requires heroic virtue proven through constancy in faith, hope, and charity unto death (Benedict XIV, De Servorum Dei Beatificatione), the neo-church substitutes psychological endurance and political advocacy.
“Her faith seems to me to have been so well grounded, first in a loving, faith-filled family, and then in her Franciscan formation,” O’Brien explained.
This vague appeal to “formation” ignores whether she adhered to integrally Catholic faith after Vatican II’s demolition of religious orders. Her affiliation with the secular Franciscans—a post-conciliar entity promoting the heresy of religious indifferentism through its 1978 Rule’s embrace of “dialogue”—renders her spiritual pedigree suspect. True Franciscan holiness, as exemplified by St. Maximilian Kolbe (martyr for the faith, unlike Ruff-O’Herne), requires militant opposition to modern errors, not ecumenical hand-holding.
Forgiveness Without Repentance: A Protestant Heresy
The article celebrates Ruff-O’Herne’s forgiveness of an unrepentant war criminal: “We looked each other in the eye and I told him that I had forgiven him… we embraced. It was healing for both of us.” This violates Christ’s command: “If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him” (Luke 17:3). The Church teaches forgiveness presupposes the offender’s contrition (Council of Trent, Session XIV). Absolving an unconfessed aggressor constitutes false mercy, denying justice and enabling evil—precisely the error fueling Bergoglio’s scandalous embrace of apostates.
Moreover, her activism demanding governmental apologies substitutes pagan legalism for sacramental repentance. The article omits whether she sought the Japanese soldiers’ conversion to Catholicism or encouraged their confession—the only path to true reconciliation (John 20:23). Instead, her memoir’s therapeutic language (“healing for both of us”) echoes Carl Rogers, not St. Augustine.
Canonization Amid Ecclesial Collapse
Efforts to declare Ruff-O’Herne a “saint” rely on the post-conciliar canonization factory that canonized 1,344 individuals between 1978-2022—more than all previous popes combined. This inflationary devaluation mirrors the neo-church’s abandonment of doctrinal rigor, where “sainthood” becomes a political tool to promote progressive idols. Contrast this with Pius X’s warning: “The Saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult circumstances in Church history”—not passive victims therapized into silence.
The article’s silence about Ruff-O’Herne’s stance on post-conciliar apostasies—communion for adulterers, pagan worship in the Vatican, abolition of the Sacrifice of the Mass—speaks volumes. Did she reject Paul VI’s Novus Ordo? Attend the Traditional Latin Mass? Oppose Australia’s collapsing “Catholic” institutions that now bless sodomy? Without evidence of combative orthodoxy, her “virtues” are naturalistic traits indistinguishable from Buddhist stoicism or Muslim fatalism.
Omissions That Condemn
Nowhere does the article mention Ruff-O’Herne’s relationship with sacramental grace—did she confess anger, receive Communion in reparation, offer her sufferings for the conversion of Japan? The reduction of her spiritual life to “deep faith… love for God” (quoted from her U.S. testimony) reflects the neo-church’s divorce of piety from doctrine. True saints like Maria Goretti forgave while explicitly invoking Catholic truths: “I forgive Alessandro Serenelli… and I want him with me in Paradise forever.” Ruff-O’Herne’s memoir, by contrast, centers on emotional closure, not the salvation of souls.
Fr. O’Brien’s campaign exemplifies the neo-clergy’s betrayal: rather than urging penance for Australia’s 90% abortion “Catholics,” he wastes energy on a feel-good canonization. As the Catholic Weekly (quoted here) degenerates into a mouthpiece for anti-Roman sentiment, true believers must recall Pius XI’s maxim: “Peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ” (Quas Primas, 1925)—not in therapeutic activism or canonization circuses.
Source:
An Australian saint of forgiveness? (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 28.01.2026