[Catholic Caucus] Father Master. The Founder of the Apostolic Movement of Schönstatt Abused His Nuns Kentenich

L'Espresso ^ | July 2, 2020 | Sandro Magister / Alexandra von Teuffenbach

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[Catholic Caucus] Father Master. The Founder of the Apostolic Movement of Schönstatt Abused His Nuns

Today’s bombshell news is that the German priest Josef Kentenich, founder of the apostolic movement of Schönstatt, who died at the age of 83 in 1968 and whose cause for beatification is underway, in the 1950’s was found guilty by the Holy See of the sexual abuse of nuns belonging to his movement.

The news comes to us along with its details, in the letter below, from the scholar who discovered it, Alexandra von Teuffenbach, former professor of theology and Church history at the Pontifical Lateran University and the Athenaeum “Regina Apostolorum,” a specialist on the history of the councils and the editor, among other publications, of the multivolume edition of the Vatican Council II diaries of Jesuit theologian Sebastiaan Tromp.

None other than Tromp was the apostolic visitor the Holy See sent in 1951 to Germany, to the village of Schönstatt, to ascertain what was feared to be taking place in the nascent movement. With the immediate effect that a decree was issued from Rome by the Holy Office, ordering Fr. Kentenich to step aside from the work he founded and above all from his nuns.

But that decree did not state all of the reasons. Alexandra von Teuffenbach has however found these extensively documented in the reports drawn up by Tromp during his inspection, kept in the archives of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith.

Opened not long ago for consultation by scholars, together with all the records of the pontificate of Pius XII, these reports were the mine in which the scholar set about digging.

In 1965 Paul VI commuted the sentence and allowed the elderly founder to return to Germany, where he died three years later.

The Schönstatt apostolic movement is still one of the most renowned and widespread on a worldwide scale. One of its most recent superiors general was Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, archbishop of Santiago, Chile from 1998 to 2010, called by Pope Francis in 2013 into the restricted circle of his cardinal advisers in the governance of the Roman curia and of the universal Church.

Fr. Kentenich’s biography on Wikipedia is in the style of a hagiography, in support of his beatification cause. But of course, after this discovery, it will have to be rewritten all over again.

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Dear dottore Magister,

In the course of the research I carried out in various archives on the Dutch Jesuit Sebastiaan Tromp (1889-1975), professor at the Gregorian, consultant for the Holy Office, and secretary of the theological commission of Vatican Council II, I recently came across some documents concerning a major religious enterprise.

In the years 1951-1953 Tromp was in fact appointed to make an apostolic visit to Schönstatt, in the diocese of Trier in Germany, which is still the site of the headquarters of an extensive and diversified movement, also made up of Marian sisters. When it was founded by the German Pallottine priest Josef Kentenich in the years immediately preceding the first world war, there was as yet no such canonical form as the secular institute, which the initiative would later assume.

So this pioneering work, which immediately found a large number of followers, was the subject of an apostolic visit from Rome. Why?

The proceedings - now accessible thanks to the opening of the archives up to and including the whole pontificate of Pius XII - tell of a previous visit to the nuns of Schönstatt ordered by the bishop of Trier, who sent his auxiliary Bernhard Stein there from February 19 to 28 of 1949. In general terms he approved of the work, while highlighting a few flaws and irregularities.

In particular he wrote:

"Despite the clear vision of the great educational goal and despite the high level of spiritual care, there seem to be only a few confident personalities with true independent thinking and inner freedom, among the male leaders and among the Marian nuns.”

And just a bit further on he added that he had found an “internal dissatisfaction so characteristic of the Marian nuns, as well as insecurity and lack of autonomy.”

Based on the report of his auxiliary, the bishop of Trier wrote to Fr. Kentenich, who however contested, distorted, and manipulated the bishop's provisions, which this latter did not by any means appreciate.

At this point the matter went to Rome and a new apostolic visit was arranged, this time entrusted to Fr. Tromp.

Over the span of three years the Jesuit went to Germany several times and studied various aspects of the initiative, as can be seen from the hundreds of pages in German and Latin kept in the archives.

What caught my attention, however, were not the statutes of the work, which had to be refashioned, but the serious abuse of power by the founder at the expense of the nuns, clearly verified and highlighted by the Roman visitor, just as the local one had done before him.

The obligation imposed on the nuns to confess to the founder - at least in some circumstances - is just one aspect. What Tromp gathers from the testimonies, from the letters, from the many conversations he had, including with the founder himself, is indicative of a situation of complete subjugation of the nuns, concealed in a certain way by a sort of family structure applied to the work.

Kentenich was the “father,” the founder with absolute power, often equated with God, so much so that in many expressions and prayers it is not clear whether these are addressed to God the Father or to the founder himself. But the “mother” general in this “family” has no power whatsoever, and even less so the “daughters,” meaning the religious women. A “father-master,” therefore, a striking example of what Pope Francis probably means when he speaks of clericalism, with the father and founder of the work who sets himself up as the proprietor of the nuns, in soul and body.

This condition of theirs was also made explicit in concrete acts. The nuns, on a monthly basis, had to kneel before the “father,” hold out their hands, give themselves totally to him. The dialogue that took place, often with the nun alone and behind closed doors, was as follows:

“Whose is the daughter?” Answer: “The father’s!”
“What is the daughter?” Answer: "Nothing!"
“What is the father to the daughter?” Answer: “Everything!”
“To whom do the eyes belong?” Answer: “To the father!”
"To whom do the ears belong?” Answer: “To the father!”
"To whom does the mouth belong?” Answer: “To the father!”

Some nuns also reported on this continuation of the rite:

“To whom does the breast belong?” Answer: “To the father!”
“To whom do the sexual organs belong?” Answer: “To the father!”

This ritual brings us to the account made in a 1948 letter, transcribed by Fr. Tromp, by a German nun who was in Chile at the time of these events. The subject of the letter is an incident of sexual abuse. The nun reports that after what had happened to her during one of these rites she was no longer able to see the founder as the “father,” but only as a “male,” recounting that she had rebelled and had suffered for a year before being able to talk about it with her confessor.

He did not react, as might have been feared, by reproaching the nun for her “impurity.” Instead, he told her that he would not give her absolution her until she gave him permission to report Fr. Kentenich's behavior to Rome, “since he did not understand how intelligent nuns could participate in these things, but still less could he understand the father.”

The nun, in her evident internal conflict, full of embarrassment and fear, wrote a letter to the mother general in Germany, who sent a copy to Kentenich and accused the nun in her reply of being possessed by the devil. Later when the apostolic visitor asked the mother general, who by that time had been dismissed, if she had received other letters of that kind, the mother general said there had been from six to eight letters, less serious according to her, which she had thrown away.

The whole climate, the whole environment described by the visitor is highly sexualized. Ballets of nuns around the founding father, nighttime meetings, ambiguous expressions are certainly not what is expected in a religious house. But after initially denying the facts, the supporters of the work - primarily Pallottine superior general Woicjech Turowski, since Kentenich was still a Pallottine - believed they could justify everything: they claimed that the founder was only helping the nuns to free themselves from sexual tensions with a “psychotherapeutic pastoral remedy.”

In August of 1951 a decree of the Holy Office - with pontifical confirmation - removed Fr. Kentenich from his work, exiling him and forbidding him any further contact with the nuns. The Church had acted quickly and without raising public scandal, since the intention was not to harm the work but only to help the nuns. But hundreds of pages of proceedings, over the following years, tell of how the founder, who was staying at a Pallottine house in Milwaukee in the United States, in no way complied with the Vatican provisions, keeping in contact with the nuns, who - and this is perhaps the most eloquent thing - were unable to attain the freedom and autonomy that the visitors had hoped for.

There was no new beginning for Schönstatt, because so many of the sisters preferred the founder's charm to the directives of the Church. Those nuns never stopped writing, denigrating and slandering not only the visitors but also the sisters who had cooperated with them and the priests who had testified against Fr. Kentenich. The Holy Office had to intervene for many more years, at least over the whole period for which documentation is now accessible.

This is the dark part of the story, but there is also an edifying part. And it is the Roman curia that operated under Pius XII and that - certainly in this case - succeeded in giving its best.

The proceedings tell of an assiduous and meticulous search for the truth. Everyone is listened to, including the friends of Fr. Kentenich, who emphasize the merits of the work but much less the person of the founder. Pius XII, who follows and approves each step, considers carefully everything the nuns write to him.

In addition to the work he did as visitor, which looks irreproachable even seventy years later, the way in which Fr. Tromp refers to the meeting with the abused nun, when she was finally able to return to Germany, is very striking. One probably never would have expected from an old school Dutch Jesuit this straightforward note in Latin, which can be translated as follows:

“She said nearly the same things that are found in the letter. She added that afterward she was not molested again by Fr. Kentenich. She is still anxious, for fear of having done wrong by revealing the matter. I told her that she acted correctly and I forbade her to have any contact with Fr. Kentenich on this subject, in person or in writing.”

That Church which today is so often blamed for not knowing how to deal with sexual abuse was instead ahead of its time here. This was the early fifties, long before state laws would protect victims of abuse and before society would become aware of the subject. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, proceeded in the most correct way possible for those women, without however demeaning them by publicizing the facts. In the decree of the Holy Office nothing is written about the abuse, but the disputed facts are communicated in writing to the mothers superior, so that they may accept more easily the dismissal of the founder. Unfortunately, the nuns were unable to grasp the hand extended to them; they were unable - this is clear from the proceedings - to detach themselves from that man, like the many women who are unable to get away from the husband who mistreats them and often excuse and defend him.

The story is all the more terrible because, many years after it was launched in 1975, the cause of Fr. Kentenich’s beatification has concluded its diocesan phase and is about to move on to Rome. And that is why I am writing to you today, dear dottore Magister, to make this story public, to bring an end to the veneration of this “father” and demolish the many proposed reconstructions of alternative truths, as if this were merely a matter of psychological weaknesses in the face of a man at once so charismatic, skillful, and terrible.

I did not feel that I could keep silent, because as a woman tears came to my eyes in reading those records, and as a Christian I think that only the Truth makes us free.

Alexandra von Teuffenbach

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