Timotheus Bitterli

Timotheus Bitterli OSB (* May 12, 1905 as Franz Xaver Bitterli in Rohr , Canton Solothurn , Switzerland ; † June 7, 1990 in Waegwan ) was a Swiss mission benedictine , apostolic administrator of the Hamhŭng diocese , the Yanji monastery and the Tokwon territorial abbey .

Life

Franz Xaver Bitterli entered the novitiate of the Benedictines of the Archabbey of Sankt Ottilien in the second half of the 1920s , where he was given the religious name Timotheus . He made his profession on October 11, 1928 and was ordained a Catholic priest on March 6, 1932 .

During the Japanese occupation in 1909, Benedictine missionaries from the Archabbey of St. Ottilien in the north of the Korean peninsula near the port city of Wŏnsan founded the Tokwon Monastery. The monastery flourished until the Korean War. After the Communists came to power in 1949, the authorities ordered the dissolution of all monasteries. Tokwon Abbey was closed by the police on May 9, 1949. Some of the German and Korean monks were taken to the Pyongyang prison and later to the Oksadok camp in an impassable mountainous area of ​​North Korea, where most of them died in the early 1950s. Some of the monks managed under the direction of Brother Kim Beda to flee to the south, where they seek refuge in the Apostolic Vicar of Taiku found. Archabbot Chrysostomus Schmid then sent Father Bitterli to Korea in 1951. Under his leadership, the survivors founded in 1952 in Waegwan the Benedictine Waegwan .

On May 9, 1952, he was appointed Apostolic Administrator of Tokwon, on April 9, 1954, Apostolic Administrator of Yanji Monastery, on March 10, 1962, Apostolic Administrator of Hamhŭng . On May 22, 1981, he was replaced as the Apostolic Administrator of Hamhŭng. On October 4, 1985, he retired as Apostolic Administrator of Tokwon and Yanji.

Web links

• Entry on Timotheus Bitterli on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on February 23, 2019.
• Entry Timotheus Bitterli on benediktinerlexikon.de