Diocese of Passau

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Diocese of Passau
Erzbistum Freiburg Erzbistum Bamberg Erzbistum Berlin Erzbistum Hamburg Erzbistum Köln Erzbistum München und Freising Erzbistum Paderborn Bistum Aachen Bistum Augsburg Bistum Dresden-Meißen Bistum Eichstätt Bistum Erfurt Bistum Essen Bistum Fulda Bistum Görlitz Bistum Hildesheim Bistum Limburg Bistum Magdeburg Bistum Mainz Bistum Mainz Bistum Münster Bistum Münster Bistum Osnabrück Bistum Passau Bistum Regensburg Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart Bistum Speyer Bistum Trier Bistum Trier Bistum WürzburgMap of the Diocese of Passau
About this picture
Basic data
Country Germany
Ecclesiastical province Munich and Freising
Metropolitan bishopric Archdiocese of Munich and Freising
Diocesan bishop Stefan Oster SDB
Emeritus diocesan bishop Wilhelm Schraml
Vicar General Josef Ederer
founding 0999
surface 5,442 km²
Dean's offices 10 (12/31/2015 /)
Parishes 305 (December 31, 2018)
Residents 610,000 (December 31, 2016 / AP 2017 )
Catholics 462,788 (December 31, 2018)
proportion of 75.9%
Diocesan priest 311 (December 31, 2015 /)
Religious priest 92 (12/31/2015 /)
Catholics per priest 1,148
Permanent deacons 39 (July 2015)
Friars 121 (12/31/2015 /)
Religious sisters 443 (December 31, 2015 /)
rite Roman rite
Liturgical language Latin , German
cathedral St. Stephen's Cathedral
address Residenzplatz 8
94032 Passau
Website www.bistum-passau.de
Ecclesiastical province
Erzbistum Freiburg Erzbistum Bamberg Erzbistum Berlin Erzbistum Hamburg Erzbistum Köln Erzbistum München und Freising Erzbistum Paderborn Bistum Aachen Bistum Augsburg Bistum Dresden-Meißen Bistum Eichstätt Bistum Erfurt Bistum Essen Bistum Fulda Bistum Görlitz Bistum Hildesheim Bistum Limburg Bistum Magdeburg Bistum Mainz Bistum Mainz Bistum Münster Bistum Münster Bistum Osnabrück Bistum Passau Bistum Regensburg Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart Bistum Speyer Bistum Trier Bistum Trier Bistum WürzburgMap of the church province of Munich and Freising
About this picture

The Diocese of Passau ( Latin Dioecesis Passaviensis ) is a Roman Catholic diocese in the east of Bavaria . It comprises the eastern part of the Lower Bavaria administrative district and the Altötting - Burghausen area in Upper Bavaria . Until 1803, the bishops of Passau ran a secular principality in addition to the diocese : the Passau bishopric .

history

The diocese was founded in 739 by Boniface . During the Middle Ages, it developed into the largest diocese of the Holy Roman Empire with an area of ​​42,000 km² and expanded over Vienna to western Hungary . The Hochstift Passau was much smaller at last 991 km² and was located around the city of Passau mainly in the Bavarian Forest region .

However, the history of Christianity in the area of ​​the diocese begins long before 739. Around the year 300 the first Roman residents were baptized. The saints St. Florian , the traveling bishop St. Valentin and St. Severin lived in the area of ​​the Diocese of Passau in this earlier time.

Coat of arms of the Diocese of Passau

Up until the first decade of the eleventh century, the diocese of Passau extended in the east to the March and Leitha (east-Austrian border rivers) and in the south to the foothills of the Alps. It could rightly be called the Danube bishopric .

Since the area of ​​the Diocese of Passau was almost entirely in Austria, there were repeated difficulties with the Austrian rulers who intended to remove the Austrian part of the diocese from the control of the Bishops of Passau. In 1469 the Habsburg Emperor Friedrich III succeeded. to obtain the bull In supramae dignitatis specula from Pope Paul II , which founded the diocese of Vienna from the former Passau (and at the same time Wiener Neustadt from the former Salzburg ) area - initially quite small, roughly limited to the respective cities .

From the 14th to the 17th century, the diocese and bishopric of Passau experienced many ups and downs. During the time of the Council of Trent, Prince-Bishop Urban von Trennbach (1561–1598) had a beneficial effect in Passau. He stabilized the turn to the Catholic faith and was considered benevolent, but church-strict.

In 1722, under Bishop Joseph Dominikus von Lamberg, after centuries of efforts, the exemption from the ecclesiastical province of Salzburg was achieved. In 1729 it had to surrender the areas in the southeast to Vienna and Wiener Neustadt; In 1783 the rest of the areas of the Diocese of Passau under Austrian sovereignty were separated and made independent as the dioceses of St. Pölten and Linz .

During the secularization in Bavaria , the bishops of Passau lost the secular principality in 1803 . All other worldly possessions were also confiscated and almost all monasteries closed. In 1826 the diocese lost its exemption and was subordinated to the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising as a suffragan . 1813 and 1822 the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Passau to the southern area around was Simbach , Altoetting and Burghausen extended previously to the archbishopric of Salzburg had heard and Bavaria at this time to lower Danube Circle counted with the then capital of Passau (Salzburg areas in the Isar circle came however to Munich-Freising). Due to a later reorganization, parts of these Passau areas are now also in Upper Bavaria.

geography

The diocese of Passau today has an area of ​​5,442 km². From Passau it is enough on the German bank side, following the course of the state border to Austria in the Danube, about 25 km down the Danube to the Jochenstein power plant below Obernzell , and then along the Austrian border to Wegscheid and from there in the lower Bavarian forest to run "up" on the Austrian and Czech border to behind Zwiesel . Approximately along the south side of the Rusel ridge , the diocese border stretches back into the Danube valley below Deggendorf , where it then roughly follows the course of the Isar to Landau an der Isar , from there to the south to south of Eggenfelden roughly along the course of the federal road 20 to orient. After Eggenfelden, the diocese border extends in a south-westerly direction along federal road 588 to Altötting, from where it runs east along federal road 299 to just before Trostberg . At the southern border of the Altötting district, the diocese border is directed eastwards to the border with Austria in the Salzach , which it in turn follows along the Salzach and Inn to the city of Passau.

Statistical data

Currently (as of July 2014) over 480,000 Catholics belong to the Diocese of Passau. With around 79 percent (as of December 31, 2014), the Diocese of Passau has the highest proportion of Catholics of all German dioceses. The diocese comprises 285 parishes and 20 branches, which are now combined into 86 parish associations, which are cared for by around 343 priests (120 of them retired), 38 permanent deacons as well as parish and pastoral officers. Over 50% of the 285 parishes have fewer than 1,000 Catholics. The Diocese of Passau is one of the largest employers in its structurally weak rural region with a total of around 10,000 full and part-time employees in a wide variety of occupational fields. The diocese is a co-sponsor of the Catholic University of Eichstätt .

cathedral

The diocese of Passau is the ecclesiastical administrative district with the largest proportion of Catholics. Catholic population of Germany by dioceses (as of December 31, 2012).

The St. Stephan's Cathedral is the Bishopric Church. It probably has its early origins in the late Roman period. The interior of the cathedral is largely baroque , the choir is still from the Gothic period. In the cathedral there is the largest church organ of a cathedral with 17,974 pipes in 233 registers (see main article organs of the cathedral St. Stephan ). There are a total of five organ works that can be played together from a main console. The largest organ pipe is over eleven meters long and weighs 502 kilograms.

Pilgrimage sites

The Altötting pilgrimage site , which is visited by more than a million pilgrims every year , also belongs to the diocese of Passau . The faithful visit the Marian pilgrimage site on the one hand because of the " Black Madonna " in the Chapel of Mercy, at the site of which two miracles of healing occurred in 1489, and on the other hand because of St. Brother Konrad von Parzham , who was a porter in the Capuchin monastery there .

The Mariahilf pilgrimage church above Passau is also historically significant . The pilgrimage, founded in 1622, became of great importance after the second Turkish siege of Vienna and the Battle of Kahlenberg in 1683, when the Passau Mariahilf image became the "state image" of the Habsburg monarchy .

cartridge

St. Valentine , St. Maximilian and St. Brother Konrad von Parzham belong to the diocese patrons .

Personalities

Diocese structure

Development of membership numbers

The number of deaneries in the Diocese of Passau was reduced in 2010 through mergers and restructuring from 17 to ten at present (as of July 2014).

Culture and sights

Stephansdom Passau

Parishes

Monasteries

Own celebrations

The regional calendar for the German-speaking area is supplemented by the following celebrations in the Diocese of Passau (in brackets behind each rank and liturgical color ):

The solemn festival of the diocese patron Valentin was moved from January 7th to July 1st in 2018 to better separate it from the Christmas festival group.

Notes : The following abbreviations apply to the ranking in the following order:

H: Solemnity (Sollemnitas)
F: Festum
G: due day of remembrance (memoria obligatoria)
g: non-mandatory day of remembrance (memoria ad libitum)

See also

literature

  • Herbert Wilhelm Wurster : The Diocese of Passau and its history. 4 volumes, Strasbourg 1994–2010.
  • August Leidl : The Bishops of Passau 739-1968 in short biographies. ²1978.
  • Walter Brandmüller (Ed.), Handbook of Bavarian Church History. 3 volumes. St. Ottilien 1991–1998.
  • Joseph Pflugbeil: Chronicle of the pastoral care offices of the Diocese of Passau. Country hat 1881.

Web links

Commons : Diocese of Passau  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Diocese of Passau: Numbers around the diocese. Archived from the original on July 22, 2016 ; Retrieved July 22, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b Catholic Church in Germany. (PDF: 1,041 kB) Statistical data 2018. Secretariat of the German Bishops' Conference, July 19, 2019, p. 3 , accessed on July 19, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Bishop Dr. Stefan Oster SDB: “The Church is facing a great challenge.” Homepage of the Diocese of Passau, July 18, 2014, accessed on July 20, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Numbers and facts 2014/15 website of the German Bishops' Conference ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF), accessed on July 20, 2015.
  5. ↑ Irmgard Bezzel: The library of the Gurk bishop Johann Jakob von Lamberg (1561-1630). A library of Romanesque prints from the 16th century. In: Börsenblatt for the German book trade - Frankfurt edition. Volume 89, (November 5) 1968 (= Archive for the History of Books. Volume 62), pp. 2919–2928, here: p. 2919.