Johannes Baptist Rosner
Johannes Baptist Rosner SAC (also John Baptist Rosner ; born May 13, 1908 in Schnaittenbach , Bavaria, † April 8, 1998 in Limburg an der Lahn ) was a German Roman Catholic clergyman and missionary . He was Bishop of Queenstown , South Africa .
Life
education
Johannes Rosner was born out of wedlock to a maid and attended elementary school in his hometown from 1914 to 1920. In accordance with his longstanding wish, he went to Freising to attend the Pallottine missionary seminar . In 1928 he finished high school with the Abitur.
With the attire on April 25, 1928 in Olpe , he began the novitiate in the Society of Apostolic Life of the Pallottines. He concluded it on May 1, 1930 with temporary profession . On May 1, 1933, he made his perpetual profession. He completed his philosophical and theological studies in Olpe and Limburg . During these years of study he put emphasis on missiology , ethnology and linguistics and learned the beginnings of the Bantu languages . On March 19, 1934, he was ordained a priest in Limburg by Bishop Antonius Hilfrich . On June 6, 1935, he was sent to the Pallottine Mission in South Africa with three other Fathers.
Missionary and pastoral activities in South Africa
From 1935 on he took over the teaching position and one year later became the head of the seminary for colored students in Swellendam , Cape Province . At the same time he studied Afrikaans at the University of Stellenbosch and Philosophy, Ethics of the African Peoples and German at the University of South Africa . He completed this course in 1945 with a Bachelor of Arts .
In May 1940, Johannes Baptist Rosner was in Queenstown to learn the Xhosa language there . When the rumors of arrests due to the Second World War grew stronger, he went back to Swellendam. Like many of his fellow brothers, he was arrested and held in the “Andalusia” internment camp . But his language skills quickly gave him a certain privileged position in this camp. He became a teacher and translator, and after a short time he was appointed pastor of the camp.
After the internment, in 1945 he was appointed secretary to Monsignore König, the Apostolic Prefect in Oudtshoorn , and published the cross-diocesan church newspaper “Katolike Wereld”. He also worked as an English and Afrikaans teacher at the commercial college. From 1947 to 1949 he was pastor at St. Savior's in Oudtshoorn, then until 1951 pastor at St. Thomas in Mossel Bay .
Even before that, from 1938, but especially during these years, Rosner worked on translations into Afrikaans: the New Testament, a prayer book, a catechism, Biblical history and a Sunday missal. Later, in 1960, he translated the Roman Missal into Afrikaans for all of South Africa.
In October 1951 he was commissioned to set up a missiological institute in the Diocese of Queenstown . Despite begging trips in Europe, this institute could not be realized at this time. It was only later, in 1958, that Bishop Johannes Rosenthal succeeded in opening a catechist school in Lumku, east of Queenstown, which was soon to achieve great importance as a supra-diocesan missiological institute.
In 1952 Rosner was given pastoral care in Cofimvaba and Cathcart in the Xhosa area , Transkei , Queenstown diocese. In 1954 he was called back to the Diocese of Oudtshoorn and took over the parish in Beaufort West in the Great Karoo . From there he built the Victoria West mission station .
From 1961 to 1972 he was pastor at St. Peter and Paul in George , a church for whites. During this time he was a religious teacher at the high school of the Holy Cross Sisters and school inspector of the diocese of Oudtshoorn. From 1965 he was vicar general of the diocese under Bishop Bruno Hippel SAC . After he left the office of bishop, he was appointed apostolic administrator of the diocese. Under Bishop Manfred Gottschalk SAC he was again active as vicar general from 1969 to 1972.
Activities as Bishop of Queenstown
When Bishop Johannes Rosenthal SAC, the first Bishop of Queenstown, had to resign for health reasons, Rosner was on February 3, 1972 by Pope Paul VI. appointed Rosenthal's successor. He was ordained episcopal on April 25, 1972 in the Christ the King Cathedral of Queenstown by the Archbishop of Cape Town Owen Cardinal McCann ; Co-consecrators were the Bishop of Oudtshoorn, Manfred Gottschalk, and Johannes Baptist Lück , Bishop of Aliwal . His motto was: Fortis in caritate ("Strong in love").
For eleven years, up to the age of 75, Bishop Rosner worked in the diocese of Queenstown, the majority of which is inhabited by Xhosa, in which apartheid , the total separation of areas of blacks, coloreds and whites, was an insurmountable problem in his time for pastoral work, in which the constant shortage of priests and financial hardship set limits to proselytizing and in which families were torn apart by migrant work. Precisely for this reason he campaigned especially for the Africanization of the Church, for family pastoral care and the training of catechists.
Last years and death
In 1984 Herbert Nikolaus Lenhof SAC was appointed his successor. Bishop Rosner worked in South Africa for a few years until he returned to Germany to the Limburg Mission House in 1987 for health reasons.
On April 8, 1998, Bishop Johannes Rosner died in the infirmary of the Mission House in Limburg.
He was 89 years old, 67 years a Pallottine, 64 years a priest and 25 years a bishop.
Web links
- Entry on John Baptist Rosner on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on September 26, 2017.
Individual evidence
- ^ Bishops of Queenstown (Roman Rite). In: Diocese of Queenstown South Africa. gcatholic.org, accessed September 26, 2017 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rosner, Johannes Baptist |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rosner, John Baptist |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German Catholic missionary and bishop |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 13, 1908 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Schnaittenbach , Upper Palatinate |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 8, 1998 |
| Place of death | Limburg on the Lahn |