Franz Jalics

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Franz Jalics S.J. (actually Ferenc Jalics ; * 1927 in Budapest ) is a Hungarian Roman Catholic priest ( Jesuit ) and author of spiritual books.

Life

Origin and education

His mother, Isabella, b. Fricke (1902-2004) grew up in Sövényháza , attended the Sophianum of the Sacre Coeur nuns in Budapest and did a doctorate in linguistics. Her father had forbidden her to study mathematics because then she would never find a husband. At her aunt's ball, she met Jalics Kalman, whom she married in the fall of 1925. The couple lived in Gyál , Hungary and had five sons and five daughters. His father was captured by the communist secret police after World War II and was released a few months before his death in 1950. His mother fled the Russian army with her sister and children during the war, and after the Hungarian Revolution, first to Vienna, where she found refuge with the Sacre Coeur nuns, and then to the United States with the help of her brother, who lived in Cleveland , Ohio States where she worked as a teacher from 1957.

Franz Jalics grew up on his father's estate in Gyál and initially pursued a military career at his father's request. In February 1945 he was a 17-year-old Hungarian officer candidate in Erlangen . His tasks also included rescue work after bombing raids in Nuremberg. When he was attacked again, he suffered agony in the face of the apparent powerlessness in a protective cellar, where he had a deep experience of God.

In 1946 he returned to Hungary and entered the Jesuit order after graduating from high school. Under pressure from the communist government, he had to leave Hungary again in 1948. He first traveled to Germany again, where he studied philosophy at the Berchmanskolleg in Pullach from 1950 to 1951 . From 1951 to 1954 he then continued his studies at the Catholic University in Leuven , Belgium. He then completed a two-year internship in the high school of the University of Mons . In 1956 he was sent to Chile by his order , and a year later to Argentina , where he studied theology at the University of Buenos Aires and was ordained a priest in 1959. After a so-called “spiritual year” in Cordoba, he lectured dogmatics and fundamental theology from 1962 to 1976 at the religious faculty for theology and philosophy in San Miguel . From 1963 he was also the spiritual guide of the studying Jesuits there and began to give retreat courses. In 1966 he received his doctorate in theology and then taught at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina in Buenos Aires and the Jujuy National University in San Salvador de Jujuy .

Overcoming a crisis of faith

When he experienced the crisis of faith that only the visible world existed, the atheistic worldview seemed to him the most honest. For three years he wrestled whether his religious life was a fatal error. Once, after realizing that he had not properly listened to a confrere, he wondered if his relationship with God was similar. After a year the crisis was over.

He read the book Sincere Tales of a Russian Pilgrim (on the Bible word “Pray without ceasing!”) And began with the Jesus prayer .

Work in the slum

He had met and made friends with Orlando Yorio during his studies . In 1974 the two went - possibly with a third Jesuit confrere - to the Villa Miseria (poor district) called "Bajo Flores" south of the Flores district (Buenos Aires) to share life with the poor. In the beginning of the Argentine civil war after Peron's death (1974) between the extreme right and left, the third confrere may have joined the left guerrilla.

The two priests had worked with Mónica Quinteiro, who had worked as a catechist in the Bajo Flores for a number of years , and with whom Yorio may have had a closer relationship. Quinteiro belonged to the Partido Autentico , which was associated with the Montoneros . When rumors surfaced again in December 1975 that the two priests were collaborating with the guerrillas, they asked their religious provincial Jorge Mario Bergoglio to assure the military that this would not be the case.

According to Bergoglio, he had learned that the three were on a wanted list of the military. He therefore urged them to leave the favela or the country and presented them with the ultimatum to either live with society in the favela or in the religious community . They then asked for his release from the Jesuit order, which was accepted for Yorio on March 19, 1976. Because Jalics had already made his last religious vows, his request was rejected. No bishop in the greater Buenos Aires area wanted to accept her afterwards. Bergoglio had later communicated with Orcoyen (Anselmo O., director of the Culto Católico de la Cancillería ) on the matter . On March 23, 1976 , the military staged a coup.

During this time, Mónica Mignone, Emilio Mignone's daughter, also spent a few hours a week at the Bajo Flores, and met with Yorio a week before her and her friend Maria Marta Vasquez's disappearance (May 14). As Oscar Antonio Montes (Head of Marine Operations) explained to Emilio Mignone in July 1976, one of the two priests was dangerous.

Incarceration and release

Jalics had a third experience of God after he and Yorio were arrested by soldiers on May 23, 1976 in Bajo Flores. The reasons given by various sources that led to this kidnapping are contradictory. While in captivity, Jalics gained the conviction that it was based on a false statement by his (former?) Jesuit superior. When Jalics was asked about Mónica, he did not know which of the two was meant. The drugged or barbiturate Yorio, who was supposed to reveal his links to terrorists, only spoke of God and Jesus. An officer explained to them: “You aren't a guerrilla, you're not involved in violence, but you don't realize that when you go to live in a slum, you are bringing people together, you are uniting the poor, and uniting the poor is subversive. ”(“ You are not a member of the guerrillas, you are not involved in violence; however, you do not realize that if you go to a poor neighborhood to live there, you are bringing these people together, you are uniting the poor - and the union of the poor is subversive. ») An officer's false promise to be released next Saturday is attributed to psychological torture. They spent the first five days or so in a prison, where Yorio concluded from noises (aircraft flying low) and voices (training courses) that it was ESMA . Then they came to a private house with Don Torcuato. They ultimately remained in captivity for five months, handcuffed and blindfolded. Jalics survived this time, in which anger, fear, depression, sadness and hope alternated, through constant Jesus prayer with which he wanted to forgive - not his interrogators, but the person whose supposed false testimony had brought him into this mess.

Admiral Montes had admitted to Emilio Mignone in a "boastful indiscreet moment" that the Navy had the two priests. In September, his mother tried to find out his whereabouts and whether any formal charges had been brought against him through the US and Argentine embassies.

Her release on October 23, 1976 came surreptitiously without explanation. As Yorio reported at the bishops' conference two days later, they were given an injection of sleeping pills and put into a van. After waking up, half-dressed in a field near Cañuelas , they went to a hut where a civilian said he had seen a helicopter the day before.

Departure from Argentina

In early November 1976, on Yorio's advice, Jalics left Argentina and spent a year in Cleveland, USA and Canada. He has lived in Germany since 1978, initially in St. Trudpert Abbey in Obermünstertal. Here he noticed that earlier latent depression and aggression had disappeared since captivity; the constant invocation of Jesus had brought about a purification. From this spiritual experience he developed his contemplative retreat .

Eight years after the kidnapping - after he had burned the documents with which he tried to prove the guilt of his persecutors - and four years later at a Jesuit meeting in Rome with Pedro Arrupe , he felt finally liberated.

Working in Europe

In 1984 Jalics founded his own retreat house in Gries, Wilhelmsthal , which he ran until 2004. He also led contemplation courses in Switzerland, for example in the Lassalle House and in the Flüeli-Ranft .

Besides Emmanuel Jungclaussen , Sabine Bobert and Peter Dyckhoff , Jalics is probably the most important spiritual companion for hesychastic prayer in the German-speaking area. While with Dyckhoff the prayer of rest according to Johannes Cassian is more in the foreground, with Jalics, as with Jungclaussen and Bobert, the Jesus prayer forms the center of the spiritual life.

Jalics also has an ecumenical effect , because it puts the Christ-centered dimension of the Jesus prayer in the foreground and the Jesus prayer can be prayed by Christians of all denominations. He introduced many evangelical clergymen and sisters of the Christ Brotherhood Selbitz community as well as other communities to the hesychastic spirituality of the Jesus prayer.

Through his book Contemplative Exercises, first published in 1994 . An introduction to the contemplative way of life and the Jesus prayer became widely known to Jalics and there were even more people interested in the practice of the Jesus prayer. This book has since been translated into several languages ​​and is an important work for a practice-oriented introduction to contemplation.

Franz Jalics lives in his native Budapest.

Relief from suspicions

In 2013, the persecuted by the Argentine military dictatorship exonerated the former Jesuit superior Jorge Mario Bergoglio and current Pope: "These are the facts: Orlando Yorio and I were not reported by Father Bergoglio." On October 5, 2013, Pope Francis received Franz Jalics in Rome for a personal conversation about the contents of which the Vatican did not reveal anything.

Publications (selection)

  • Growing together in faith: Instructions for a spiritual discussion . From the Spanish by Isabella Jalics; Würzburg: Echter, 2008, ISBN 978-3-429-02988-3 .
  • Contemplative retreats. An introduction to the contemplative way of life and the Jesus prayer . 12th edition; Würzburg: Echter, 2009, ISBN 978-3-429-01576-3 .
  • The contemplative way (= Ignatian impulses, 14). 5th edition; Würzburg: Echter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-429-02767-4 .
  • Spiritual accompaniment in the gospel . Würzburg: Echter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-429-03482-5 .

literature

  • Michael Pflaum: The active and the contemplative side of freedom (= Tübingen Perspectives on Pastoral Theology and Religious Education, 47). Lit, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-11732-8 ; P. 408f ( online ).
  • Nello Scavo: Bergolio's List . Herder, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-34046-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://thickethouse.wordpress.com/2010/05/ ( Memento June 15, 2013 on WebCite )
  2. ↑ A brief overview of his biography can be found in the appendix of his work Contemplative Exercises. An introduction to the contemplative attitude to life and the Jesus prayer , Echter Verlag, Würzburg, 2009, ISBN 978-3429015763 , p. 400.
  3. ↑ SHARON CHURCHER and TOM WORDEN: Special report: The damning documents that show new Pope DID betray tortured priests to the junta. Daily Mail , March 16, 2013, accessed June 18, 2013 .
  4. ↑ Dr. Eckhard Bieger SJ: The new Pope in times of military dictatorship: "He negotiated with the junta". Domradio , March 15, 2013, accessed June 18, 2013 .
  5. ↑ Dr. Eckhard Bieger SJ: The Pope and the charge of treason. explicit, March 16, 2013, accessed June 18, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Sergio Rubin, Francesca Ambrogetti: El Jesuita. Conversaciones con el cardenal Jorge Bergoglio, sj. Vergara & Riba, 2010, ISBN 950-15-2450-7 .
  7. ↑ Horacio Verbitsky: El silencio ; P. 111
  8. ↑ http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/03/16/article-2294580-18B918CC000005DC-484_634x536.jpg
  9. ^ Iain Guest: Behind the Disappearances ; Pp. 34, 35
  10. ↑ Behind the Disappearances, p. 35
  11. ↑ http://foia.state.gov/documents/Argentina/0000A0AE.pdf
  12. ↑ http://foia.state.gov/documents/Argentina/0000A0B9.pdf
  13. ↑ http://foia.state.gov/documents/Argentina/0000A145.pdf
  14. ↑ http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/conadep/nuncamas/353.html
  15. ↑ George M. Anderson (SJ): With Christ in Prison: From St. Ignatius to the Present ; Pp. 63, 64
  16. ^ The life and work of Fr Franz Jalics SJ , accessed on November 27, 2017.
  17. ^ Father Franz Jalics SJ is 90 years old ( Memento from December 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 4, 2020.
  18. ^ Military dictatorship in Argentina: Father exonerates Pope Francis , March 21, 2013, accessed on March 24, 2013.
  19. ^ Jesuit Father Franz Jalics with the Pope. Vatican Radio, October 5, 2013, archived from the original on December 19, 2013 ; Retrieved October 7, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Jalics, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jálics Ferenc
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian Roman Catholic priest (Jesuit) and author of spiritual books
DATE OF BIRTH 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest