Johannes Bettray

Johannes Bettray SVD (born June 28, 1919 in Oberhausen ; † June 9, 1980 in Troisdorf ) was a German theologian and Steyler missionary .

Life

Johannes Bettray was born on June 28, 1919 as the son of a railway official in Oberhausen . Shortly afterwards, his father moved to the village of Huethum, near Emmerich . In Emmerich, Johannes Bettray first attended a grammar school for two years and continued his training at the Missionsgymnasium in Steyl in 1934 . After graduating from high school, he began the novitiate in Steyl in 1940 and took his first vows on July 20, 1941 in Sankt Augustin . In August 1941, the Sankt Augustin mission seminary was expropriated and Johannes Bettray continued his studies in theology and philosophy at the seminary in Fulda .

In the spring of 1943 he was drafted into military service , where he was deployed as a medic on the Russian front. After the end of the war, Johannes Bettray completed his theological training in St. Gabriel and was ordained a priest on August 29, 1948 . Since the task of training future missionaries was planned for him , he was sent to the Gregoriana in Rome in September 1949 for further studies (focus: missiology ) . There he received his doctorate in January 1953 with the thesis "The Accommodation Method of Father Matteo Ricci SI in China" for a Doctor of Missiology. A month later he took over the chair of missiology at Phil.-Theol. University in St. Gabriel; from 1955 he also held lectures at the Catholic faculty of the University of Vienna and became a consultor for the Catholic faculty of Lower Austria. In addition to his academic work, Cardinal Innitzer entrusted him with editing the publications of the Austrian Mission Center in Vienna in 1954 ; later he became its general secretary. He held this position until 1960. In April 1965 he came to the Philosophical-Theological College SVD St. Augustin in Sankt Augustin near Bonn and worked until his death as a professor in the establishment of the Institute of Missiology, of which he was director from 1971 to 1974.

Missionary work and pastoral care

Two study trips took Johannes Bettray to the mission area of ​​the Steyler missionaries in Indonesia and Taiwan . He looked after numerous sister convents and had been responsible for the Bergheim-Müllekoven branch since 1965.