Saint of the Week: Dag Hammarskjöld
9/24/2025
Dag Hammarskjöld
Peacemaker
1905 - 1961
Dag Hammarskjöld was born in Jönköping to a Swedish noble family and spent most of his childhood in the family castle in Uppsala. He was the fourth and youngest son of Swedish Prime Minister Hjalmar Hammarskj. By 1930, Dag had obtained Licentiate of Philosophy and Master of Laws degrees. While working on his law degree he had also obtained a job as Assistant Secretary of the Swedish Unemployment Committee. He subsequently taught economics at the University of Stockholm, went on to become president of the board of the Bank of Sweden, was named Sweden’s Minister of State and then head of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations. On 10 November 1952 Trygve Lie announced his resignation as U.N. Secretary-General, setting off months of negotiations between the Western powers and the USSR, with little hope of reaching an agreement on his successor because the Russians vetoed every candidate until Dag’s name was put forward as a “neutral” candidate. This time, the Soviets did not veto the choice, believing Dag to be a rather “harmless” choice. During his two terms at the UN’s helm, Hammarskjöld tried to improve relations between Israel and the Arab states; negotiated the release of 11 captured US pilots who had served in the Korean War, established the UN Emergency Force, and intervened to cool the 1956 Suez Crisis. Some historians credit him with allowing the Vatican to participate within the UN that same year. In 1960, however, the Belgian Congo became independent and civil war promptly broke out. Hammarskjold set out to negotiate a ceasefire but died in a controversial plane “crash” while transiting Zambia on 18 September 1961. A deeply spiritual Lutheran, for years, he had maintained a private journal of his thoughts on the Lordship of Christ and its meaning for his life. The journal was published posthumously under the title Markings. Two extracts follow:
- "God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."
- "He who has surrendered himself to it knows that the Way ends on The Cross--even when it is leading through the jubilation of Gennesaret or the triumphal entry into Jerusalem."
