Joseph Schröffer

Cardinal coat of arms by Joseph Schröffer

Joseph Martin Cardinal Schröffer (born February 20, 1903 in Ingolstadt , † September 7, 1983 in Nuremberg ) was Bishop of Eichstätt and later Archbishop of Curia of the Roman Catholic Church .

Life

Schröffer was born in Ingolstadt in 1903 , where he grew up with his four younger sisters and moved to the Episcopal Boys' College in Eichstätt in 1917 . Already in 1921, the year before his Abitur , the then Eichstätt Bishop Johannes Leo von Mergel OSB became aware of the talented high school student. Mergel urged the rector of the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum in Rome for Schröffer to be accepted into his house. In October 1922 Schröffer left for Rome to take up his philosophical and theological studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University . In 1925 he acquired the philosophical doctorate , in 1929 the theological doctorate , after he had been ordained a priest on October 28, 1928 . At the request of the bishop, Schröffer stayed in Rome for two more years to study New Testament exegesis .

After a short chaplaincy in the parish of St. Willibald in Weißenburg in Bavaria, Schröffer was appointed to the academic teaching post. As a professor of moral theology and later also pastoral theology, he worked from 1933 at the Philosophical-Theological University in Eichstätt. In November 1933 he signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler . Bishop Michael Rackl appointed him vicar general in 1941 . In 1948 Pope Pius XII appointed him . to the bishop of Eichstätt. He was ordained bishop on September 21, 1948, by the Archbishop of Bamberg, Joseph Otto Kolb .

He was particularly interested in international cooperation and German-French and German-Polish reconciliation. 1954-67 he was president of the German branch of the Pax Christi movement . He was appointed to the Preparatory Commission for the Second Vatican Council and moved in 1967 at the request of Paul VI. as secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education in the Roman Curia . On January 2, 1968, he was appointed titular archbishop of Volturnum . On May 24, 1976 by Paul VI. with the title Diakonie San Saba to Cardinal Deacon created , he put reasons of age on this day all his offices. Joseph Cardinal Schröffer took part in both conclaves in 1978.

Since 1952 Schröffer was an honorary member of the Catholic student association Rheno-Frankonia Würzburg in the KV .

Schröffer died on September 7, 1983 in Nuremberg. His grave is in Eichstätt Cathedral .

Act

Grave in Eichstätter Cathedral

The difficult conditions in the post-war period demanded from Schröffer above all active action. He founded the St. Gundekar-Werk as a non-profit housing and settlement company to counter the housing shortage. The number of Catholics in the diocese of Eichstätt had almost doubled due to the influx of the displaced . The diaspora area in the north of the diocese , especially in the south of Nuremberg, required an increased personnel and spatial expansion of the church structures: numerous parish offices were established and seventy new churches built.

Schröffer achieved great merits in the post-conciliar reform of the formation of priests.

Web links

Commons : Joseph Schröffer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry on Joseph Schröffer on catholic-hierarchy.org
• Werner Josef Hentschel:  Schröffer, Joseph Martin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 582 ( digitized version ).
• Joseph Cardinal Schröffer in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

predecessor	Office	successor
Michael Rackl	Bishop of Eichstätt 1948–1967	Alois brake
Dino Staffa	Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education 1967–1976	Antonio María Javierre Ortas SDS