Wilhelm Finnemann

Wilhelm Finnemann SVD (born December 18, 1882 in Büninghausen , now Lippetal-Heintrop-Büninghausen , † October 26, 1942 in Batangas Bay , Philippines ) was a German missionary bishop and martyr .

Life

Wilhelm Finnemann, born in 1882 in Büninghausen, Hultrop parish, district of Soest, the second oldest of a total of 14 children, first learned the shoemaker's trade from his uncle before he decided to become a missionary and in April 1900 joined the Missionary Community of Steyler Missionaries (Gesellschaft des Divine Word) occurred. After his ordination (on October 1, 1911 in St. Gabriel near Vienna) sent to the Abra Mission in the Philippines, he worked there as a pastor, builder and doctor. In the course of the First World War , Finnemann was taken into protective custody by the Americans in 1917 and brought to the USA. There he raised money for the Philippine mission. After his return in 1922, he founded the Holy Spirit Parish in Manila. On February 8, 1929, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Manila and titular bishop of Sora . He was ordained bishop on May 21, 1929 by Archbishop of Manila Michael James O'Doherty . Cocoon screechers were the bishop of Nueva Segovia Santiago Caragnan Sancho and the bishop of Lipa  Alfredo Verzosa y Florentin .

On December 4, 1936, Finnemann was appointed Apostolic Prefect of Mindoro , the seventh largest island in the Philippines. His vicariate was two thirds the size of Westphalia and had about 120,000 inhabitants.

After the Japanese captured the island in the spring of 1942, Japanese soldiers confiscated the church buildings and chased the Holy Spirit Sisters from their homes. When Bishop Finnemann refused to hand over the school and the nursing home to the Japanese, he was arrested and tortured. On October 26, 1942, Finnemann was taken to a Japanese military boat on October 26, 1942, on the pretext of wanting to transfer him to Manila for interrogation, tied up and weighted with iron weights, thrown overboard in the open sea.

The Catholic Church accepted Bishop Wilhelm Finnemann as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

The beatification process has started; In 1999 Finnemann was named Venerable Servant of God.

literature

• Hermann Multhaupt: Death on the way to Matoco. Scenes from the life of the pioneer, missionary and bishop Wilhelm Finnemann. Paderborn 1992, ISBN 3870887362
• Bishop Wilhelm Finnemann. First Apostolic Prefect of Calapan, Mindoro 1882-1942 , in: Steyler Missionschronik 1963, 39-42. - also in: J. Fleckner: So were they , Vol. 1, St. Augustin 1991, 265-270.
• Michael, Peter H .: A Hero Deserving a Halo. Bishop William Finnemann, SVD - Man - Missionary - Martyr . Manila 1992, 164 pp.
• H. Multhaupt: Art .: Bishop Wilhelm Finnemann in Helmut Moll (Ed.): Witnesses for Christ. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhundert , Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Vol. II, pp. 1581–1584.
• Index Defunctorum Societatis Verbi Divini 1875-2010. Supplementum Catalogi SVD, Apud Curiam Generalitiam SVD, Romae 2011, p. 33 [1] (PDF; 1.2 MB)

Web links

• Martyr Bishop Wilhelm Finnemann in the Philippines [2]
• Humiliated, slapped and beaten [3]