Heinrich Stein (priest)

Dr. Heinrich Stein as a missionary father in Brazil

Heinrich Stein , later also Heinrich Christof Stein (born February 16, 1897 in Grünstadt , Palatinate , Kingdom of Bavaria , † September 30, 1948 in Bahia , Brazil ) was a Catholic priest , missionary and head of a secondary school in Brazil.

Life

Dr. Heinrich Stein as a Marist school brother in Brazil

Heinrich Stein was born in a simple family in the Palatinate city of Grünstadt, Frankenthal district office . There he first attended school and continued his education at the Bischöflichen Konvikt St. Joseph, a Catholic boarding high school in Speyer .

After the First World War , Stein joined the Order of the Marist School Brothers in Arlon, Belgium , a community of teachers and educators founded in 1817 by Marcellin Champagnat . Its members consciously remain as lay friars without becoming priests. Heinrich Stein received the religious name Frater Bonaventura von Jesus, received his doctorate and went to Brazil in 1925 as a Marist school brother. There he taught a. a. Languages ​​and ran a high school in the state of Santa Catarina .

Since Stein aspired to become a priest, he changed orders and joined the local community of missionaries of the Holy Family . His new order name was Christof.

While his German homeland became a war zone, Heinrich Stein was ordained a priest on December 1, 1940 in Olinda , in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco . He celebrated his first mass on December 2nd in Recife . In Stein's home town of Speyer , despite the difficult wartime, souvenir pictures were printed for the new priest and distributed to the faithful, especially in Grünstadt, where the missionary was very popular because of his unusual career and the distant sphere of activity.

Mainly in the Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife, Heinrich Christof Stein worked in various places as a pastor before the Bishop of Ilhéus called him to his curia, where he acted as his personal secretary and confidante.

Father Stein died of cancer in Bahia at the age of 52 and was buried in Brazil .

In the Pilger , the church newspaper of his home diocese of Speyer, a detailed obituary for the late Palatinate missionary appeared in 1948, as well as in the pilgrim calendar (yearbook of the diocese) 1950. Jakob Bisson recorded the work of Father Heinrich Stein in 1956 in his church history book: Seven Speyer Bishops and theirs Time fixed.

Souvenir picture printed in Germany to commemorate the ordination of priests in Brazil

literature

• Obituary for Father Heinrich Stein, Der Pilger Nr. 45, Speyer, November 7, 1948.
• Death wreath in the Palatinate clergy , pilgrim calendar, Speyer 1950.
• Jakob Bisson : Seven Speyer bishops and their time 1870–1950: Contributions to the local church history , Pilger-Verlag Speyer 1956, p. 193.

Web links

• Brazilian publication on German immigrants, including Heinrich Stein's date of birth, his native Frankenthal (Palatinate) and the year of immigration to Brazil