Johannesgemeinschaft (secular institute)

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The Johannesgemeinschaft is an approved Roman Catholic world community ( secular institute ) founded by Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr in 1944 . It consists of a female branch, a lay male branch and a priest branch.

history

Hans Urs von Balthasar initially belonged to the Society of Jesus from 1929 and was ordained as a religious priest in 1936 . In 1940 he became the student chaplain of Basel and baptized the convert Adrienne Kaegi-von Speyr (1902-1967), the wife of the Basel professor for Medieval and Modern History Werner Kaegi (1901-1979) at the All Saints' Day in 1940 . The encounter with this Basel doctor and mystic shaped him so much that he founded the Johannesgemeinschaft with her. Since the Jesuit order did not release him from work within the institute and the provincial forbade him any further collaboration with Adrienne von Speyr or the establishment of a new religious community, Balthasar resigned from the Society of Jesus in 1950.

In the meantime he and his friend Joseph Fraefel founded the “ Johannesverlag Einsiedeln ” to publish the works of Adrienne von Speyr in 1947 . This is still a work of the Johannesgemeinschaft today. In the same year, the general canonical approval of the secular institutes by Pope Pius XII took place. with the Apostolic Constitution Provida mater ecclesia .

Today the seat of Johannesverlag Einsiedeln is Freiburg im Breisgau. The Hans-Urs-von-Balthasar archive is located in Basel .

Current status

The members of all three branches (priests, women, men) are active in different European countries and in America, the lay people mainly in secular professions.

Identical names

The community of St. John , a religious community of monks and nuns founded in France in 1986 , is a different ecclesiastical community despite the similarity of names.

literature

  • Hans Urs von Balthasar: First look at Adrienne von Speyr. Johannesverlag, Einsiedeln 1968, 4th edition, Johannesverlag Einsiedeln, Trier 1989, ISBN 3-89411-008-2 .
  • Hans Urs von Balthasar: Our mission. Report and instruction. Johannesverlag, Einsiedeln 1984, 2nd edition: Johannesverlag Einsiedeln, Freiburg im Breisgau 2004, ISBN 3-89411-080-5 .

Footnotes

  1. On Joseph Fraefel see Manfred Lochbrunner : Balthasariana. Studies and Investigations . Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2016, ISBN 978-3-402-13156-5 , pp. 133f.

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