Josef Domitrovitsch

Josef Domitrovitsch SDB (born March 14, 1893 in Szombately ( Sumetendorf ), † February 27, 1962 ) was a Hungarian religious , missionary and Roman Catholic bishop .

Life

As the eldest of ten children of a Hungarian peasant family, he showed an early inclination for the priestly profession. First, however, he had to contribute to the family's livelihood. Through a friend he found out about the Institute for the Later Vocals of the Salesians of Don Bosco in Penango , where he was then referred by his pastor and accepted in 1912. But since the Salesians opened their grammar school in Vienna in 1912, he switched to studying there. In order to save him from military service, Director August Hlond prematurely dressed him as a cleric in 1915 and sent him to the novitiate in Wernsee . In 1916 he took his first vows . After studying philosophy and doing an educational internship in Vienna, he studied theology in Foglizzo . After his ordination on November 18, 1923, he received his doctorate from the University of Turin .

In 1924 he went on a mission to South America, initially in support of the later Bishop Pedro Massa on the Rio Negro in Brazil . In 1927 he succeeded Don Balzola in Mato Grosso on the Amazon , where he worked for six years. In 1934 he returned to his Hungarian homeland. For the first six months, he had to stay in a hospital bed because of life-threatening pneumonia. After recovery, he returned to the mission with five sisters whom he placed under the Archbishop of Belém do Pará , Antônio de Almeida Lustosa SDB. A little later Domitrovitsch himself was appointed Apostolic Delegate of this institute.

After he raised funds in Germany and North America for the mission area under his bishop's command and was able to win six missionaries, on his return in 1939 he was sent to the area between Venezuela and Colombia , where he had a church, two homes, a hospital and a large one built agricultural property. In 1945, in poor health, he was transferred to a climatically milder area as a pastor.

Pope Pius XII finally appointed him on December 19, 1949 as coadjutor prelate of Rio Negro with the titular diocese of Podalia , he received the episcopal ordination on March 19, 1950 in the Sacred Heart Church of São Paulo by the apostolic nuncio , Archbishop Carlo Chiarlo . On August 5, 1961 he was appointed the first prelate of the newly established Territorial Prelature Humaitá . His friend, the governor of the Amazon region, gave him a large estate as a basis for further missionary work. However, continued attacks of angina pectoris prevented this. Cared for by Don Bosco sisters , he died only three months after being introduced as the prelate of Humaitá at the age of 69.

literature

• Georg Söll : The Salesians Don Bosco (SDB) in the German-speaking area. 1888-1988. Review of the 100th anniversary of the death of St. John Bosco (January 31, 1988), the founder of the “Society of St. Francis de Sales”. Don Bosco Verlag, Munich 1989.

Web links

• Entry on Josef Domitrovitsch on catholic-hierarchy.org

predecessor	Office	successor
---	Prelate of Humaitá 1961–1962	Miguel d'Aversa SDB