The Founder of Schönstatt's Has Been Exposed. But His Own Insist on Wanting Him Sainted

There are no words to express my dismay and horror! They want to canonise a known abuser! Why has Rome not put a stop to the cultus?

From Settimo Cielo

By Sandro Magister

The case of Fr. Josef Kentenich (1885-1968), founder of the Schönstatt apostolic movement, is being expanded with a new chapter, after the three already brought to light on Settimo Cielo by Church historian Alexandra von Teuffenbach, in this buidup with very eloquent titles:

> Father Master. The Founder of the Apostolic Movement of Schönstatt Abused His Nuns (July 2 2020)

> The Founder of Schönstatt Was Never Rehabilitated. This Letter From Ratzinger Is Proof (August 3 2020)

> "He Told Me To Put My Face in His Lap." This Is How the Founder of Schönstatt Trained His Nuns (November 2 2020)

Incredibly, in fact, despite the fact that Fr. Kentenich’s misconduct is now documented by a pile of papers and testimonies, the promoters of his cause for beatification are going forward undeterred. Not only that. The nuns of Schönstatt have taken the author of the research to court in Germany, demanding the withdrawal of the first volume she published, the censorship of the most troublesome testimonies, and the payment of compensation for damages.

But let’s hear from Alexandra von Teuffenbach, on the developments of the Kentenich case.

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Dear Mr. Magister,

When at the beginning of July 2020 I documented for you how Fr. Josef Kentenich treated the sisters of the Schönstatt apostolic movement he founded, I never imagined what would happen to me in the following eight months.

I have in fact become, in spite of myself, an observer of the discordant action of the Church - in its various components - regarding cases of abuse.

Because on the one hand I continue to frequent the Vatican in the concreteness of its archives, open to scholars from all over the world without discrimination or exclusion and with great openness to the reality both human and ecclesial that is found in the documents and is not always luminous.

But on the other hand, I also see the executive ineptitude of the bishop of Trier, Stephan Ackermann, who instead of closing the cause for beatification that has been moving forward for decades sets up a new commission of “experts” (six, mostly members of Schönstatt) . He does not know that the leaders of his diocese have collected, at least since 1975, dozens of letters and sworn testimonies both from fathers of the Society of the Catholic Apostolate (popularly called “Pallottines,” of which Kentenich was a brother), and from nuns vilified, humiliated, and abused? And does he think he and the Catholic Church will become more credible with the publication of the records of the abuses committed by that man during his exile in Milwaukee?

The inconsistency we are witnessing is that of a Church that on the one hand celebrated a summit on abuse in January 2019 with many “mea culpas,” but on the other hand allows the leaders of a movement to already promote devotion - with statues, holy cards, feasts, prayers - to one of their founders who, as the documents and proceedings show, on the sixth and on other commandments is certainly not a brilliant example, thus disturbing many faithful.

Many of these, especially from Latin America, have written to me requesting access to the documentation I have collected in their own language as well. Now they will be able to find it, thanks to translators who have lent their work for free, in the volume “'El padre puede hacerlo'. Una documentación de archivo,” available in Spanish on Amazon.

The deep bewilderment of many Catholics in the face of the silence of those who knew about Fr. Kentenich’s abuses should also generate doubts in the Church hierarchy as to whether that summit was sufficient or if instead something else may be needed to really change things. Of course, what is certainly not decisive is precisely what is being loudly invoked especially in Germany: a change in the rigid and patriarchal structures of the Church, improperly identified as the exclusive reason for the existence of abuses, especially sexual ones.

By now we know, in fact, that abuses, above all sexual, also take place in other contexts considered more “democratic.” Not only that, we also know thanks to the personal story of Fr. Kentenich that it was the Church of Pius XII, in spite of appearing so rigid, that put a brake on him, sending him into exile on the other side of the world and forbidding him for the rest of his life any contact with his nuns. Of course, in dealing with sins against the sixth commandment the Church of that time acted not on the basis of psychology but of the Gospel, morality, canon law, while the society of the time and much of psychology and psychiatry did not even care about those women and their suffering, or even denied the concreteness of their pain.

But getting back to my book, released last year in Germany, I cannot say when the Spanish version will be available, because with regard to the German edition, the pity that one feels after reading the story of Sister Giorgina Wagner and of other nuns abused by Fr. Kentenich has evidently not touched their fellow sisters of today.

In Germany, at the end of November, the Schönstatt nuns commissioned a famous law firm to order me and the publishing house to immediately withdraw the book, not to reproduce a long list of sentences extracted directly and indirectly from the sworn testimonies of nuns, and also to pay a considerable amount for damages. We have now arrived at the trial stage. I am confident that Germany as well still honors the freedom of scholarship.

The most grotesque accusation that has been made against me - and that the lawyer for the nuns simplylifted from the official communications of the Schönstatt presidency, the postulator, and others of the movement - is that I unduly meddled in the process of beatification, and moreover that I publicized “secret proceedings” of the process.

But perhaps the idea behind all this juridical effort is that in suing me those nuns think they are nonetheless taking to the altars the man they have wished to shield - by keeping silent, hiding documents, denigrating and threatening those who publish them - from his record of serious and repeated abuse.

Now that some of Schönstatt's “secrets” have been revealed by me, they are probably afraid that I will also publish the rest of the story, which took place in Rome and then in Milwaukee. But for the Church a person can be beatified if he has lived the theological and cardinal virtues in an exemplary way, and not because his inadequate conduct has been concealed.

To then argue that the “documents are secret” is simply false. The Holy See does not in any way preclude access to documentation while the processes of beatification or canonization are being celebrated. Like many other researchers, I myself have always been able to work on the documents preserved in the Vatican archives even while - for example - the popes whose papers I studied were being beatified or canonized. No one has ever prevented the publication of those documents! Not so for Schönstatt: for them everything that is not favorable to Fr. Kentenich is part of the “secret of the beatification process.” But as the postulator of the cause does not seem to know, the procedure is secret, not the acts preserved in the various archives. Furthermore, until 2007 the witnesses of this process were not bound to secrecy: they were never bound in this sense and even had at their disposal copies of their testimonies which they handed over to Fr. H.M. Köster, who wanted to make a book of them.

It also leaves me speechless that the movement should link the names of Henrì de Lubac and Yves Congar to that of Josef Kentenich. If the first two had problems with the Holy Office in the 1950s because in some of their books there were contestable doctrinal theses, neither of them was sentenced to one of the most severe penalties that the Church can inflict on a religious: absolute exile and estrangement from his nuns, on account not of theology but of practical conduct considered gravely wrong. I remember that during Vatican Council II Fr. Kentenich was certainly not invited to return to Rome, while de Lubac and Congar participated in the preparation and unfolding of the Council at the behest of the Holy Office itself.

Dear Mr. Magister, in certain areas of the Church I still find too much silence and indifference, for reasons of self-interest, even when it comes to women, men, or children who have suffered all kinds of abuse. Jesus told a parable that is very suitable for this situation: in front of a man beaten and left dying on the side of the road, there are those who do not help him, those who go on as if nothing had happened, those who do not seek to soothe his wounds, those who do not pay for him. In that parable I see the Church’s problem in the handling of abuse and Schönstatt’s problem with its founder. Allow me to thank you for making room for my research work, while others, many others, have preferred and still prefer to remain silent.

Alexandra von Teuffenbach