Josef Alois Kessler

Josef Alois Kessler

Josef Alois Kessler ( Russian Ио́сиф (Йо́зеф) Алои́з Ке́сслер; * August 12, 1862 in the village of Louis (Ostrogowka), Samara Governorate , Russian Empire ; † December 10, 1933 in Zinnowitz , Germany) was a German-born Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in the Russian Empire. He is considered the last Volga German bishop.

Life

Josef Alois Kessler came from a Catholic family of German origin. In 1889, after studying theology in Saratov, he was ordained a priest . Kessler studied at the Theological Academy in Saint Petersburg and graduated with a master's degree in theology . He began his pastoral work as a vicar in Saratov. In 1892 he was a priest of the dean's office in Simferopol , in 1895 a priest in Sulz, from 1899 to 1903 seminar inspector in Saratow and from 1904 canon in Saratow.

Josef Kessler was appointed Bishop of Tiraspol on April 1, 1904 . He received his episcopal consecration on November 10, 1904, the Archbishop of Mohilev Jerzy Józef Elizeusz Szembek . In the course of his activity as bishop he initiated changes, founded a book publisher for spiritual literature, supported the work of monasticism, visited all the deaneries of the large diocese and donated around 75,000 confirmations . Before the invasion of the Bolsheviks , Kessler left the city of Saratov on August 14, 1918 and walked to Odessa . When the communists were about to take power in Odessa as well, the bishop wrote a warning to the nation in which he called the Bolshevik government a takeover by an antichrist , and he demanded that whoever would join this power be from should be excluded from the Church. The new Soviet government saw itself strengthened in its endeavors to find Kessler as quickly as possible. He secretly tried to leave Russia and to get to Bessarabia (today's Moldova ), where he had been a priest of the village of Krasna some time before. In 1922 he traveled to the USA. There Kessler tried to collect donations for the hungry in the Volga region. On January 23, 1930, he became titular Archbishop of Bosporus . He spent the rest of his life in Germany, in the city of Zinnowitz.

Josef Alois Kessler found his final resting place in Ornbau , next to Bishop Franz Xaver von Zottmann , who had worked as bishop in the Moldovan diocese of Tiraspol .

Web links

Commons : Josef Alois Kessler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography of Bishop Joseph Aloysius Kessler. University of Notre Dame , accessed July 14, 2016 . 
• Joseph Aloysius Kessler. Concordia University , 2008, accessed July 14, 2016 . 
• Entry on Joseph Alois Kessler on catholic-hierarchy.org ; Retrieved April 9, 2014.