Joseph Alois Faller

Joseph Alois Faller (born May 8, 1816 in Barr ; † November 23, 1894 in Saint-Cosme ) was a Franco-German Roman Catholic clergyman and founder of the order . He stands at the beginning of the Benedictine Sisters of Adoration .

life and work

Prevented Jesuit and Cistercian

Joseph Alois (French also: Aloyse ) Faller was the son of a tannery owner . He attended the St. Michael College in Friborg , Switzerland, led by the Jesuits , and entered their novitiate in Saint-Acheul near Amiens in autumn 1840 , but had to leave it for health reasons. In December 1842 he was ordained a secular priest in Strasbourg . He left his first job in Hilsenheim in 1843 to join the Trappist monastery in Oelenberg , but here, too, his health proved too weak. From 1844 he worked as a chaplain and pastor in the parishes of Stotzheim , Brebotte (1846) and Felon (1848).

Establishing the Sisters of Adoration

As pastor of Saint-Cosme , he tried to found a men's congregation in 1850, but failed for financial reasons. He then successfully founded a religious women's community in the neighboring village of Bellemagny (belonging to his parish) in 1851 . He gave her a rule based on the Benedictine rule (approved by the diocese in 1862). Faller's founding idea was to give his community the charism of Eternal Adoration of the Holy of Holies, combined with charitable tasks. The model was the Benedictine Sisters of the Holy Sacrament founded by Mechtilde de Bar , in whose monastery Saint-Nicolas-du-Port he had one of his postulants trained.

Long service and death

Faller led his congregation for 38 years. Subsidiaries were founded in France: 1867 in Lourdoueix-Saint-Michel ( Département Indre ), 1878 in Le Poët-Laval , 1882 in Bézouotte , 1884 in Saint-Louis , 1889 in Fénay , Nancy and Dijon ; also in the United States ( Louisiana ) from 1872 to 1892 (then emancipation from the parent company).

In 1891 he gave up the spiritual direction of Bellemagny, worked briefly in Saint-Louis and then founded a home for orphans in the rectory of Saint-Cosme. He died there in 1894 at the age of 78. His grave is in the Bellemagny monastery cemetery. A retirement home in Bellemagny bears his name.

Posthumous development of the congregation

After Faller's death, the French foundings in 1901 in Gevigney , 1906 in Béthune , 1907 in Lutterbach and 1920 in Biding . In 1903 the congregation founded a house in Vienna , in 1922 the monastery of St. Scholastika Neustift near Vilshofen on the Danube and in 1924 a house in Davos , Switzerland . In 1956 the congregation was officially incorporated into the Benedictine Federation (under Abbot Primate Bernard Kälin, 1887–1962) and has been called Benedictines of Adoration since then (French: Bénédictines adoratrices ).

literature

• Verena Friedrich: The Benedictine Sisters of the Adoration of Bellemagny / Les Bénédictines Adoratrices de Bellemagny. Bellemagny / Dijon - Vienne - Neustift . Art publishing house Peda, Passau 2001.
• Festschrift for the centenary of the Congregation of the Benedictine Sisters of Adoration: 1851–2001 . Ortenburg 2001.

Web links

• Entry in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints, with picture
• Web presence of the German Benedictine Sisters of Adoration, with order history and founder biography, picture
• Website of the Vienna Benedictine Sisters of Adoration, with founder biography and picture
• Short biography on the website of the Bellemagny Monastery, French
• Website of the Père Faller retirement home, French
• Literature by and about Joseph Alois Faller in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)