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His episcopal motto, taken from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, was “Christ is Yes”. Two days ago, Bishop Bernhard Rieger returned to that eternal positive confirmation, as he passed away in the quiet of the small town of Kressbronn on the shores of Lake Constance, south Germany, the place where he retired to in 1996.
Bernhard Rieger was born in 1922 in central Baden and reached adulthood as World War II broke out. This marked his late teens and early twenties, as he was drafted into the Labour Service, and later into the Wehrmacht. Until the end of the war, Rieger served as soldier and wireless operator on both the Eastern and the Western Fronts, and was taken prisoner of war by the Allies in France. There, he entered the so-called “barbed wire seminary” in Chartres. There he met the Nuncio to France, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, who would later become Pope John XXIII. Returning to Germany, Rieger studied theology in Tübingen and was ordained to the priesthood in 1951 by Bishop Carl Joseph Leiprecht of Rottenburg.
For most of his years as priest, Father Rieger worked as a parish priest throughout the Diocese of Rottenburg, and also as teacher of religion, advising the bishop on matters of education. In 1975, Fr. Rieger was appointed to the cathedral chapter and the priest council, and from 1977 onward, he held the title of Monsignor.
In 1984, Msgr. Rieger was appointed as auxiliary bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart (the diocese had had a change of name in 1978), with the titular see of Tigava. Within the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Rieger was a member of the media commission.
In 1996, Blessed Pope John Paul II accepted his resignation, and Bishop Rieger retired to the shores of Lake Constance.
Photo credit: Wolfgang Kirchherr
No April Fool’s joke, the announcement made by Father Leendert Spijkers on Easter Sunday: granted by Pope Benedict XVI back in February, the 15th century church of St. Peter in Oirschot, Diocese of ’s Hertogenbosch is to be elevated to the status of basilica minor. Bishop Antoon Hurkmans will make the official declaration some time in the summer, making it his diocese’s fourth basilica.
The church of St. Peter in Oirschot dates from 1515, replacing its predecessor which had burned down in 1462. From 1648 to 1799 the church was Protestant, and it wasn’t until 1904 that the local parish regained full ownership of church and tower. In the war, the tower was severely damaged from Allied gunfire, and it took until 1952 for restorations to be completed. The church is one of the largest remaining Gothic village churches in the province of North Brabant. The furnishings are partly original and partly taken from demolished churches with the altars dating from around 1700 and 1766 respectively. The church has been a national monument since 1966.
Age and a certain esthetic value are but two elements which can make a church a basilica. Another, and certainly not the least important, is the presence of a certain devotion within an active parish community. In the case of St. Peter’s, that devotion is to the ‘Holy Oak’.
The story goes that, some time in the early 15th century, two shepherds found a statue of the Blessed Virgin on the banks of the Beerze stream. They placed it an oak, but inhabitants of nearby Middelbeers took the statue and put it in their church. The next morning, though, the statue was back in the oak. Villagers of Oirschot came to venerate the statue, and there were reports of miraculous healings.
A chapel was built on the place of the oak, and an annual procession developed to that spot. Oak and chapel were removed in 1649, but a new chapel (view of the interior pictured) was erected in 1854, on the foundations of the old one. The original statue resides in St. Peter’s, but a replica remains at the chapel. Some 250,000 pilgrims and visitors find their way to Mary of the Holy Oak every year.
Photo credit: [1] Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, [2] Parish of St. Peter, Oirschot
Amid the unprecedented events of yesterday, regular things continue, including a cardinal exchanging the temporal for the eternal. Jean Cardinal Honoré passed away yesterday afternoon at the age of 92.
He was ordained a priest in the middle of the Second World War for the Diocese of Rennes, France. In the first years of his priesthood, Fr. Honoré taught in both Rennes and Saint-Malo, as well as at the local seminary. From 1958 to 1964 he was secretary general of the National Commission for Religious Education and director of the National Centre of Religious Teaching. He then became rector of the Catholic University of Angers, and in 1972 he was appointed as bishop of Évreux. Nine years later, in 1981, he became Archbishop of Tours. After his retirement in 1997, Archbishop Honoré was created a cardinal in 2001. He was cardinal-priest of Santa Maria della Salute a Primavalle.
Considered a specialist on Blessed Cardinal Newman, he took his episcopal motto from him: cor ad cor loquitur, heart speaks unto heart.
Cardinal Honoré was not in Rome to greet the Pope, but died in his home in Tours.
In the last such event before the sede vacante begins, Ukrainian Lubomyr Cardinal Husar marks his 80th birthday today, and as such can not take part in the conclave.
Born in Lviv, which at the time was a Polish city, in 1933, young Lubomyr’s childhood was marked by the violence of World War II. In 1944, this caused his parents to flee to the west. After some years in Salzburg in Austria, the family emigrated to the United States in 1949. A year later, Lubomyr started studying at the Ukrainian Catholic St. Basil College Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut. After time at the Catholic University of America and Fordham University, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1958. Fr. Husar was a priest for the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Stamford, which covers parts of New York and New England.
From his ordination until 1969, Fr. Husar taught at the seminary where he himself was educated, and he was a parish priest from 1966 to 1969. In that latter year, he went to Rome to study theology at the Pontifical Urbaniana University. Now a doctor of theology, he entered the Studity monastery at Grottaferrata in Italy in 1972, and two years later, he became the superior there.
Fr. Husar’s consecration to bishop in 1977, to go with his new task as Archimandrite of all the Studite monks in Europe and America, from 1978 onwards, caused a bit if a stir, since the Pope had not given his apostolic mandate, something that Roman Canon Law required, but the Law of the Eastern Churches did not.
In 1995, as his homeland reopened its borders to the rest of the world, Bishop Husar was elected as Exarch of Kiev and Vysshorod. Upon his return to the Ukraine, he relinquished his American citizenship. In 1996, he was appointed as auxiliary bishop of Lviv, and in 2001, as that see had fallen vacant, Eparch Husar was elected as Major Archbishop of Lviv. In that same year, he was created a cardinal, with Santa Sofia a Via Boccea as his title church. With Ignace Daoud, Cardinal Husar was the only Eastern Catholic to participate in the 2005 conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI.
In 2005, the see of Lviv was moved to Kiev, and Cardinal Husar became Major Archbishop of that city. In 2011, failing eyesight caused him to retire, although he had performed the Ukrainian Catholic liturgy from memory when his sight had gotten too bad.
As Major Archbishop of Kiev, Cardinal Husar received an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of America, and he was decorated by the President of Ukraine “for his outstanding personal contribution in spiritual revival of the Ukrainian nation, longstanding church work, and to mark his 75th birthday”.
Cardinal Husar was a member of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, the Pontifical Council for Culture, and the Special Council for Europe of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
There are now 117 cardinal electors who are allowed to participate in next month’s conclave.
Photo credit: Edmond Fountain/St Petersburg Times
If it weren’t for Blessed John Paul II, Józef Cardinal Glemp would have been the sole face of Polish Catholicism in the waning days of that country’s Communist regime. Yesterday he died at the age of 83.
Born in the Polish heartland in 1929, the life of young Józef was marked by war. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, he was employed as a slave labourer. Despite this, which undoubtedly marked his teenage years, he was able to continue his seminary education, culminating in an ordination to the priesthood in 1956. He belonged to the priesthood of the Archdiocese of Gniezno, although he initially worked in neighbouring Poznań. After two years, he was sent to Rome, to study canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University. In 1964, Father Glemp earned his doctorate and also the title of Advocate of the Roman Rota. He also wrapped up studies in church administration, which no doubt prepared him for his future job.
Returning to Gniezno, Fr. Glemp took up work as chaplain to Dominican and Franciscan sisters and taught religion in a house for underage delinquents. He was also secretary of the Gniezno seminary, and had duties as notary for the Polish curia.
For fifteen years, starting in 1967, he was the secretary of Poland’s great wartime prelate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. This took Fr. Glemp to Rome and all over Poland and made him a familiar face among the Polish bishops. In 1972 he was made a Chaplain of His Holiness, conferring on him the title of Monsignor. In 1976, Msgr. Glemp became a canon of Gniezno’s metropolitan chapter.
In 1979, Msgr. Glemp became bishop of Warmia, but he wouldn’t stay there long. In 1981, his longtime mentor and collaborator, Cardinal Wyszynski, died. The cardinal was archbishop of both Gniezno and Warsaw, and Bishop Glemp succeeded him in both sees, in part as a reflection of their respective importance: Warsaw as Poland’s capital, and Gniezno as Poland’s primatial see. Archbishop Glemp therefore became Primate of Poland. This gave him the right to wear a cardinal’s red zucchetto, although he wasn’t a cardinal yet.
In 1983, Archbishop Glemp became Cardinal Glemp, with the title church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. I 1992, Pope John Paul II decided to dissolve the union “ad personam“ between Gniezno and Warsaw. Cardinal Glemp remained as archbishop of Warsaw alone, but he held the title of Primate until his 80th birthday in 2009. After that date, the title reverted to the archbishop of Gniezno.
Cardinal Glemp was president of the Polish Bishops’ Conference from 1981 to 2004, and was also ordinary of the Eastern-rite Catholics of Poland from 1981 to 2007. Following th sudden resignation of his successor in Warsaw, Archbishop Wielgus, Cardinal Glemp served as Apostolic Administrator of Warsaw for three months in 2007. Until his retirement, he was a member of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Apostolic Signatura.
Cardinal Glemp’s time as archbishop was marked with few controversies, chief among this perceived anti-Semitism. He later regretted that he was perceived as such. In the Cold War years, he worked with future president Lech Walesa, and was a careful intermediary between Church and Communist leadership. He was not a violent man, and never supported violent opposition to the regime, stating that his duty was the preservation of the Church, not the overthrow of the government. Although he urged restraint from the faithful, he expected the same from the Communists.
Cardinal Józef Glemp passed away afer a battle with lung cancer. He leaves a strong Catholic identity in Poland, having successfully averted the tides of secularism in his time.
The College of Cardinals remains with 119 electors out of 210 members.
A short post to draw attention to Rorate Caeli, who present what is presumably the first English translation of a groundbreaking Dutch text… from 70 years ago. It is the pastoral letter written by the Dutch bishops on July 20 1942, and scheduled to be read out from all pulpits on the following 26th of July. In it, the bishops condemn “the persecution of the Jews and the unfortunate lot of those who are sent to work in foreign countries”.
Go, read the text at Rorate Caeli. Rumours that the Church, local and worldwide, never spoke out against the Holocaust are, as this letter may indicate, simply untrue.
With today’s 80th birthday of Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, by chance on Ascension Day, the number of cardinal electors drops to 122, returning it almost back to the legal maximum.
With the fighting spirit of his namesake (‘Vlk’ means ‘wolf’ in Czech), Cardinal Vlk has left his mark as the Church and nation of the Czechs found their place in Europe after the yoke of Communism.
Only ordained a priest at 36, Miloslav Vlk is not so much a product of academia, although he is no slouch there, but worked his way through life in Communist Czechoslovakia – even as a priest he had to work as a window cleaner for eight years in order to stay out of the government’s sights. A worker-cardinal turns 80.
Born in 1932, Miloslav Vlk grew up under the threat and occupation of Nazi Germany. During the height of the war – as entire villages were massacred in retaliation for resistance activities – 11-year-old Miloslav first started thinking about the priesthood. However, considering this a dream unattainable for a farm boy, he instead wanted to become an aircraft pilot. As the war ended, and a new Communist Czechoslovakia was created, Miloslav worked in an automobile factory and did his military service in the first half of the 1950s. He was then able to study archival science in Prague and worked in various archives until the mid-1960s. In 1964, he could finally follow his desire of studying theology in Litomerice. In the summer of 1968, during the Prague Spring of political liberalisation (which would soon be crushed by the Soviet Union), Miloslav Vlk was ordained to the priesthood, 36 years old.
He started his ministry working as secretary to Bishop Joseph Hlouch of Ceské Budejovice. This was apparently reason for state authorities to consider him suspicious, and in 1971, Father Vlk was forced to relocate to various parishes throughout southern Bohemia, and in 1978, he lost his state authorisation to exercise his priestly ministry. From 1978 until the end of 1988, Fr. Vlk lived in hiding, earning an income, first as a window cleaner and, from 1986, as an archivist in the archives of Prague’s State Bank.
In 1989 the tides turned. As the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia loomed, Fr. Vlk was again authorised to exercise his priestly ministry for a ‘trial year’. He worked as a curate near the Bavarian border. And then, in 1990, the country ceased to be Communist…
On 14 February 1990, Blessed Pope John Paul II pulled Father Vlk out of obscurity and appointed him as bishop of his native Ceské Budejovice. He would not be holding that position for very long, because a mere year later, he was called to Prague, to succeed 91-year-old Cardinal Tomášek as archbishop of Prague. As archbishop, and since 1994 as cardinal, Msgr. Vlk concerned himself not only with the local Church, but also with the Church in Europe, mirroring the new Czech Republic’s international outlook. From 1993 to 2001 he was President of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences, He was also the special secretary of the first Special Assembly for Europe of the Synod of Bishops in 1991 and also took part in the ninth General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (1994) and the second Special Assembly for Europe (1999).
Cardinal Vlk resigned as archbishop of Prague in February of 2010 and was succeeded by Dominik Duka. He is cardinal-priest of the Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. He was, until his 80th birthday, a member of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the Special Council for Europe of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
The cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pinsk
Vacant sees, dioceses without a bishop, are not unheard of. At any given time, the worldwide Church has a few dozen of these, as bishops are transferred or pass away and a successor is not yet selected. These vacancies usually last from several months to some two years in exceptional cases. The Diocese of Pinsk, in Belarus, has a different story, though. It has been without a bishop of its own for almost exactly 66 years…
Belarus is often regarded as the last dictatorship in Europe, and a country whose government looks back fondly on its Soviet history. Not surprisingly, the Church is looked upon with suspicion at best, although she has been allowed to maintain her ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the form of three dioceses and an archdiocese. Of these, Pinsk covers the entire southern third of the nation.
Established in 1925, Pinsk was led by two bishops in succession: Bishop Zygmunt Łoziński from 1925 to 1932, and Bishop Kazimierz Bukraba from 1932 to 1946. But then that episode ended, coinciding with the aftermath of World War II and the Soviet Union’s incorporation of formerly Polish territory into Belarus. Just like in other Communist countries, the Church had a hard time, especially when it comes to the free appointment of bishops and priests. As in other dioceses, apostolic administrators were appointed. For Pinsk, these were Bishop Wladyslaw Jedruszuk, auxiliary bishop of Pinsk from the time of Bishop Bukraba, from 1967 to 1991; Cardinal Kazimierz Świątek, the archbishop of Minsk-Mohilev, from 1991 to 2011; and Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusievicz, Cardinal Świątek’s successor as archbishop of Minks-Mohilev, from June 2011 to today.
As the last of Belarus’ dioceses, Pinsk now once more has its own bishop. He is Msgr. Antoni Dziemianko, 52 years old, and until today Minsk-Mohilev’s auxiliary bishop. The bishop, who incidentally has the same motto in his coat of arms as our own Cardinal Simonis – Ut Unum Sint -, was ordained to the priesthood in 1980. In 1998, he was appointed as an auxiliary bishop of Grodno, also in Belarus, with the titular see of Lesvi – a see once held by the late Cardinal Sánchez of the Philippines. In 2004, he was transferred to the Archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev, of which he was the apostolic administrator from June of 2006 to September 2007, upon the retirement of Cardinal Świątek. He continued his duties as auxiliary bishop until his appointment as ordinary of Pinsk today.
Although a vacancy of 66 years is extraordinary, it is, sadly, by no means unique. There are eight jurisdictions, in China, North Korea, Greece, Ukraine and Romania, which have been vacant for longer. The record holder is the Apostolic Vicariate of Thessaloniki in Greece, which has been vacant since Bishop Allesandro Guidati became archbishop of Naxos-Andros-Tinos-Mykonos in 1929…
Photo credit: [1] Rostisław Wygranenko
Görlitz amid the other German dioceses
The east of this blog’s area of interest, that is.
Tucked away in the triangle formed by Germany’s borders with Poland and the Czech Republic is an interesting remnant of a once powerful ecclesiastical jurisdiction – or one of the remnants, one should say. The Diocese of Görlitz was created in 1972 as an apostolic administration to conform with the post-war borders in east and central Europe. Before 1972, this was part of the great Archdiocese of Breslau, stretching across parts of modern Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, and split in separate parts following the Allies’ divisions of the Third Reich.
Now one of the smallest German dioceses with a mere 30,000 Catholic faithful, Görlitz runs the risk of being something of a lost child in the Church of the west. But good things have a tendency to be noticed, as became clear in July 2010, when Görlitz’s bishop, Msgr. Konrad Zdarsa, was sent to Augsburg, where his predecessor, Bishop Mixa, had just left amid much rumours and confusion. Bishop Zdarsa had been occupying the see of Görlitz for only three years when he was reassigned, so evidently he must have made good in the small diocese. But his departure did leave the good people of eastern Saxony and southern Brandenburg without a bishop.
Bishop-elect Wolfgang Ipolt
Now, almost exactly a year later, a clergyman from Erfurt is sent east become a shepherd. Msgr. Wolfgang Ipolt is 57 and becomes the fourth bishop of Görlitz, with its 60-some priests, and 80-some religious. Bishop-elect Ipolt was until now the rector of the interdiocesan seminary in Erfurt, which also serves Berlin, Dresden-Meiβen, Magdeburg and Görlitz, as well as students from Lithuania, Poland and the Czech Republic. As rector of such a seminary, Msgr. Ipolt may be expected to have a similarly international outlook, especially eastward towards the great Catholic nations of Poland and Lithuania, but also to the fledgling Church communities in the former German Democratic Republic – communist East Germany. The new bishop, then, reflects the identity of the diocese: situated between past and present – the strong Catholic history of past Breslau and the future of the new dioceses in eastern Germany.
With this appointment, only Berlin remains vacant in Germany.
69 years after his death, Blessed Titus Brandsma has a Twitter account. He may be followed via PaterTitus42 (in Dutch) or FatherTitus42 (English).
But what can the beatified Carmelite priest, who worked closely with the Dutch bishops against the Nazi restrictions of press during World War II, and who died in the Dachau concentration camp, be twittering about? Well, starting on 19 January, the day of his arrest in 1942, a Catholic Radio 5 program and the Dutch Carmelite Institute will publish daily tweets about what happened to Blessed Titus, what he did and with whom he spoke. The project will last six months, ending on 26 July, the day of his death.
The press release calls it a world premier, a form of ‘real-time history’ that has never been done on Twitter. I do think that something similar has been done before, albeit not in a Catholic context.
Blessed Titus Brandsma was beatified in 1985 and is one of the few ‘modern’ Blesseds from the Netherlands, let alone from the north. He was a born Frisian, although he worked and lived mostly in Nijmegen.
During the war and the German occupation of the Netherlands, Blessed Titus, who was a trained journalist, worked closely with the Dutch bishops, led by Cardinal Jan de Jong. Shortly before being arrested, Blessed Titus travelled across the country to convince editors of newspapers not to run pro-German adverts and articles. The occupier was none too pleased about it, and had the Carmelite priest arrested. Blessed Titus arrived in Dachau in June and was killed by lethal injection a month later.
