Léon Gustave Dehon

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Léon Gustave Dehon

Léon Gustave Dehon (born March 14, 1843 in La Capelle , Aisne , France ; † August 12, 1925 in Brussels , Belgium ) was the founder of the Dehonian order and a Social Catholic .

Childhood and youth

At first everything looked like a normal bourgeois way of life: Leo Dehon was born on March 14, 1843 in La Capelle in northern France. His parents earned their living breeding racehorses and selling beer . Materially, the Dehons had hardly any worries, and so the father Jules Alexandre Dehon dreamed of his son's career as a lawyer or in the diplomatic service. It hit him all the harder when his son declared at the end of school that he wanted to become a priest . The piety of his mother Stéphanie Adèle Dehon geb. Vandelet and the experiences at the Catholic boarding school in Hazebrouck (near the Belgian border) had made this decision grow in him.

The father thought nothing of his 16-year-old son's wish - and sent him to Paris to study law . The son followed his father's will, graduating as a lawyer in 1864 - and sticking to his plan to become a priest. The father tried again to dissuade him from his plan and sent him on a trip to the Middle East to change his mind. The travel-loving Leo gratefully accepted the offer, but at the end of the several months' journey his decision became irrevocable: he will study theology in Rome and become a priest.

Chaplain in St. Quentin

From 1865 to 1871 Dehon studied in Rome and graduated with a doctorate in canon law , philosophy and theology . After his ordination on December 14, 1868, he was well equipped for higher tasks in the service of French bishops. He himself was undecided about his future: should he work on the reform of the Catholic education system or join a religious community? In the end he passed the decision on to his local bishop, to whom he made himself fully available. To everyone's astonishment, this one did not bring Leo Dehon to a university or into management positions, but instead appointed him as the seventh and last chaplain in the working-class town of St. Quentin in northern France. Dehon himself admitted: "It was absolutely the opposite of what I had wanted for years: a life of prayer and study".

However, Dehon did not hesitate for a second to tackle the new and so strange challenges. After a brief analysis of the situation, it was clear to him: "In St. Quentin, the means of action are missing a church high school, a youth center and a Catholic newspaper". All three will come about through Dehon's commitment and some of them still exist today.

His attention was focused on the young workers: forced to work hard in the textile factories even as a child, without proper schooling, often without intact families in the background, alienated from a church in which they see no help - this is how Dehon described the problems of young workers. First of all, from March 1872, he gathered some young people every Sunday to spend their free time , but by September there were already 150 children and young people who met regularly. New structures were needed, and Dehon poured his fortune into building the youth center , which was open every day of the week and which had space for both a billiards room and the library, which had Catholic social studies courses and archery . In January 1875 the “St Joseph Youth Center” had around 450 registered members, making it the largest church institution for working-class children and young people in the region.

But that was not enough for Dehon: In order to be able to shape a society in a Christian way, one needs people who are able to do so. Education was the key word for him. In 1877 he founded a church high school , the St. Jean College, to which his commitment was to apply until the end of his life in 1925.

At the same time, however, Dehon felt that the actions and engagements were so demanding that his prayer life was falling short and the source of his work threatened to dry up.

The foundation of the Sacred Heart Priests

Commitment yes, but not alone and not without God: These were probably the reasons that led Dehon to found the community , the Sacred Heart Priests , almost at the same time as the St. Jean high school was founded in 1877. In the Herz-Jesu In his devotion to Jesus, Dehon discovered a spirituality that carried him: the mystery of a God whose last word is love, which gives itself against all rejection and which invites people to do the same. For Dehon, looking at the Son of God became a look at a force that can transform not just individual people but entire societies. Towards more justice, more love. No wonder, then, that the magazine he founded in 1889 was entitled “The Kingdom of the Heart of Jesus in souls and societies”. This can be seen as the program of the religious community he founded.

On the national and international stage

While Dehon tried to make stability and growth possible for the new community, he was also committed to the Christian renewal of society, including politics. At numerous congresses in France and Italy , through the publication of his first social writings and through many personal relationships, he placed himself at the service of Catholic social teaching , which was first expressed in 1891 with the encyclical Rerum Novarum on the labor question. A Christian democracy that also takes into account the dignity of the weaker, that was his vision . His commentary on Rerum Novarum, published in 1894 , quickly became standard reading in French seminaries and translated into several languages.

At the turn of the century, however, tensions between church and state grew in France. First the religious were banned from teaching, then religious communities were banned and men and women religious were expelled from France. The Sacred Heart priests were also affected by these measures - the founder of the order had to worry about the continuation of his life's work. It had a positive effect here that, thanks to Dehon's initiatives, the community had meanwhile gained a foothold in numerous other countries, such as Belgium , Luxembourg , Holland , Italy , but also in Brazil and the Congo .

The First World War

The outbreak of the First World War meant another challenge for Léon Gustave Dehon: German and French Sacred Heart priests faced one another as soldiers of their countries. For the religious community this meant an ordeal. Dehon did not take either side of the warring factions and tried in these difficult times to keep in contact with as many confreres as possible in order to maintain the threatened unity.

When the war ended, many institutions were the Sacred Heart priests in France in ruins and the brothers lived after their return from the war sporadically and without a right future perspective . The 75-year-old Dehon had to use all his strength to motivate his people to unite and to rebuild. An important trait of his personality helped him to cope with this situation: Never give up on anyone, neither friend nor opponent, but pursue everyone with sheer inexhaustible patience and love.

A life's work - beyond death

When Leo Dehon died in Brussels on August 12, 1925, the religious community of the Sacred Heart Priests founded by him already had more than 500 religious priests and friars . Today there are over 2,300 confreres in 30 countries around the world. In Germany around 60 confreres currently live and work in the Sacred Heart Monastery of Freiburg im Breisgau , the monasteries in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse , Maria Martental near Kaisersesch , Bonn-Oberkassel , Oberhausen and Handrup (Emsland).

Beatification Process and Anti-Semitism

The beatification process initiated in the Catholic Church was completed in June 2005 on the instruction of Pope Benedict XVI. exposed after historians said they found anti-Semitic statements in Dehon's writings. Dehon described the Talmud , the most important script in Judaism, as a manual for criminals. Dehon also claimed that anti-Semitism was a sign of hope.

Web links

• Dehonians in Germany
• Dehonians worldwide
• Herz-Jesu-Kloster Neustadt
• Herz-Jesu-Kloster / Gymnasium in Emsland
• Dehonians in Oberhausen
• More about Leo Dehon

literature

• Yves Ledure SCJ: Meet Leo Dehon. Augsburg: Sankt Ulrich, 2004.
• Gerhard Valerius: The Heart of Jesus and the Social Question - Leo Dehon (1843–1925), founder of the Sacred Heart Priests (SCJ). Würzburg: Echter, 1992.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Beatification of Leon Dehon - postponed? ( Memento of April 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) radiovaticana.va. June 20, 2005, accessed April 18, 2016.
2. ^ Nathan Warszawski: Of saints and other anti-Semites. haolam.de. June 9, 2015, accessed April 18, 2016.