Germán Schmitz Sauerborn

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Germán Schmitz Sauerborn MSC (German form of name: Hermann Schmitz , born January 16, 1926 in Lima ; † November 28, 1990 there) was a Peruvian religious priest and Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop in Lima .

Life

Germán Schmitz Sauerborn was born into a family of German descent, his parents were Klaus Schmitz and Elisabeth Sauerborn. His mother tongue was German; his name was Hermann in the family. “I'm a German, assembled in Peru,” he used to say of himself. He learned Spanish on the street. After primary school he attended the Colegio Peruano Alemán Alexander von Humboldt and, in the last years of high school, the Colegio La Inmaculada of the Jesuits in his hometown. As a youth he worked in the Catholic Action .

In 1946 Germán Schmitz joined the congregation of the Sacred Heart Missionaries . He completed his novitiate in Shelby, Ohio. He then studied philosophy in the USA , made his perpetual vows on August 15, 1950 in Lima and then studied theology at the Gregorian in Rome. From 1955 he worked in the mother house and in the small seminary of the north German province of his congregation in Hiltrup . There he was ordained a priest on July 20, 1958. In 1960 he returned to Peru. Among other things, he was rector of the theological-propaedeutic seminary in Caravelí , chaplain in the parish of San Felipe Apóstol in Lima and, from 1966, its pastor . He was a member of the Peruvian priestly community Oficina Nacional de Información Social (ONIS), which demanded a firm commitment from their church against the plundering of their land by the rich and for the poor.

On August 17, 1970, Pope Paul VI appointed Germán Schmitz as titular bishop of Megalopolis in Proconsulari and auxiliary bishop in Lima. Cardinal Juan Landázuri Ricketts, OFM , Archbishop of Lima, consecrated him bishop on October 18, 1970. He took his episcopal motto from the Gospel of John ( John 8:32  EU ): “La verdad de Cristo nos hará libres” ( Spanish: The truth of Christ makes you free ).

Archbishop Landázuri made Auxiliary Bishop Schmitz responsible for pastoral care in the south of the Archdiocese of Lima. Immigrants from the Andes settled there, so dozen of slum villages, called “pueblos jóvenes” (Spanish: new villages ), emerged. There he soon became known as a courageous champion of the option for the poor . Gustavo Gutiérrez , who was drafting his theology of liberation at the time , was deeply impressed by his pastoral care and the way in which he tirelessly walked through the slums, the way he spoke the language of the “common people” ( gente humilde ) . Schmitz took part in the 1971 Synod of Bishops ; his contributions were groundbreaking for the post-synodal document De iustitia in mundo .

In the 1970s and 1980s, the decades when the impulses of the Second Vatican Council were implemented in the Catholic Church in Peru, Schmitz was one of the country's most pastoral and theologically influential bishops. The memorandum on evangelization and liberation , written by Schmitz and published by the Peruvian Bishops' Conference in January 1973, caused a sensation , not least the statement that the Catholic Church, because of its option for the poor and in action for the exploited, also fulfills a “political mission” have. The Peruvian episcopate chose him as one of its representatives at the III. General Assembly of Latin American and Caribbean Bishops in Puebla 1979 . Together with Leonidas Proaño , the Bishop of Riobamba , he drafted the section on the option for the poor in the final document of the General Assembly in Puebla.

The support of the Christian youth workers , the training of the catechists and the other church workers as well as the promotion of the social engagement of the clergy in his district were of great concern to him . Through his pastoral work in the "Cono Sur" of Lima, he laid the foundation for the foundation of the Lurín diocese , which took place six years after his death.

In 1989 Germán Schmitz fell ill with cancer. He died the following year and was buried in the church that later became the cathedral of the Lurín diocese. The Requiem was celebrated by Pastor Carlos Castillo , for whom Germán Schmitz was the great role model.

Honors

Numerous social works, associations and church institutions in Peru are named after Germán Schmitz.

Fonts

  • Evangelización. Algunas líneas pastorales . Editorial Salesiana, Lima 1973.
  • with Rolando Ames and Gustavo Gutiérrez: Cinco años de Medellín 1968–1973 . Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 1973.
  • Dar la vida por sus amigos . In: Jon Sobrino (Ed.): Mons. Romero, profeta y martir de la liberación . Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones, Lima 1982.

literature

  • Elisabeth Schmitz: Mi hermano Hermann. Familiares, amigos, niñez y juventud de Monseñor Germán Schmitz . Colección Santidad Cristiana, Lima 1991.
  • Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio : Germán Schmitz. Para que se cumplieran las escrituras . In: La República , December 4, 1990.
  • Gustavo Gutiérrez: Monseñor Schmitz fue el prójimo más cercano de los pobres . In: Páginas , born 1991, issue. 107, pp. 81-84.
  • Gustavo Gutiérrez: Germán Schmitz: testigo de una nueva evangelización . In: La nueva Evangelización - Reflexiones, experiencias y testimonios desde el Perú . Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones, Lima 1992, pp. 269-290.
  • Juan Alberto Osorio Torres: Tradición y utopía pastoral. Antropología de la Diócesis desde el nacimiento de la Diócesis de Lurín: 1954–1996 . Diss., Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 2013.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Elisabeth Schmitz: Mi hermano Hermann. Familiares, amigos, niñez y juventud de Monseñor Germán Schmitz . Lima 1991, p. 17.
  2. ↑ Gustavo Gutiérrez, quoted in: Juan Alberto Osorio Torres: Tradición y utopía pastoral. Antropología de la Diócesis desde el nacimiento de la Diócesis de Lurín: 1954–1996 . Diss., Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 2013, p. 254.
  3. ^ Juan Alberto Osorio Torres: Tradición y utopía pastoral. Antropología de la Diócesis desde el nacimiento de la Diócesis de Lurín: 1954–1996 . Diss., Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 2013, p. 209.
  4. ↑ Monseñor Germán Schmitz MSC , accessed on March 19, 2020.
  5. ↑ Young-Hyun Jo: Sacerdotes y transformación social en Perú (1968-1975) . Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro Coordinador y Difusor de Estudios Latinoamericanos, Mexico City 2005, ISBN 970-32-2998-0 , p. 79.
  6. ↑ Massimo Zorzin: Il cardinale Juan Landázuri Ricketts. La Chiesa peruviana e latinoamericana nel periodo del Concilio Vaticano II . Studium edizioni, Rome 2018, ISBN 978-88-382-4628-9 , p. 132.
  7. ↑ Dieter Afhüppe: 75 years of the Sacred Heart Missionaries in Peru . In: Hiltruper Monatshefte , Vol. 121 (2013), Issue 3, pp. 73–76, here p. 75.
  8. ^ Gustavo Gutiérrez: El Dios de la vida . Instituto Bartolomé de Las Casas, Lima 1989, p. 14. On its effect on Gustavo Gutiérrez see also: Juan Alberto Osorio Torres: Tradición y utopía pastoral. Antropología de la Diócesis desde el nacimiento de la Diócesis de Lurín: 1954–1996 . Diss., Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 2013, pp. 253-254.
  9. ↑ Felipe Zegarra Russo: Fundamentos teológicos de los derechos humanos . In: Elizabeth Salmón Gárate (ed.): Miradas que construyen. Perspectivas multidisciplinarias sobre los Derechos Humanos . Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 2006, ISBN 9972-42-775-7 , pp. 45–85, here p. 61.
  10. ↑ Jeffrey Klaiber: Historia contemporánea de la Iglesia Católica en el Perú . Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 2016, ISBN 978-612-317-168-1 , p. 91.
  11. ↑ Jeffrey Klaiber: La iglesia en el Peru. Su historia social desde la independencia . Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, 3rd ed. 1996, p. 448.
  12. ↑ Willi Knecht : The Church of Cajamarca. The challenge of an option for the poor in Peru . Lit, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8900-9 , p. 213.
  13. ^ Juan Alberto Osorio Torres: Tradición y utopía pastoral. Antropología de la Diócesis desde el nacimiento de la Diócesis de Lurín: 1954–1996 . Diss., Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 2013, p. 216.
  14. ↑ Germán Schmitz: fundador y visionario . In: Avansur. Revista de la Diócesis de Lurín , vol. 19 (2019), issue 95, October 2017, p. 2.
  15. ↑ Tomás Burns: Obras del Espíritu en tiempo de cólera. Reflexiones de un misionero . Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones, Lima 1994, p. 41.
  16. ^ Juan Alberto Osorio Torres: Tradición y utopía pastoral. Antropología de la Diócesis desde el nacimiento de la Diócesis de Lurín: 1954–1996 . Diss., Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 2013, p. 268.
  17. ↑ Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio: Libres para creer. La conversión según Bartolomé de las Casas en la Historia de las Indias . Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 1993, ISBN 84-89390-65-7 , p. 7.
personal data
SURNAME Schmitz Sauerborn, German
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmitz, Hermann (German form of name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Peruvian bishop
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Lima
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1990
Place of death Lima