Francis Xavier Weninger

Francis Xavier Weninger ( born October 31, 1805 Castle Wild House, Lower Styria, Austria ( now belonging to the village Selnica ob Dravi in Slovenia), † June 29, 1888 in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States) was an Austrian Jesuit spiritual writer and popular missionary, mainly worked in the USA under the German-speaking immigrants.

Life and work

Youth

Francis Xavier Weninger was born at Schloss wild house on the river Drava (now Viltuš ), in Lower Styria. His mother was of noble birth, which the family had contacts with the Austrian imperial court. He grew up mostly on in Vienna, where he attended high school. Originally, the young man aspired to a military career, his father, however, decided that he should study pharmacy and sent him to study in a pharmacy to Ljubljana. Weninger enjoyed the patronage of Empress Caroline of Austria, née Princess of Bavaria, who was very charitable and religious. It enabled him to study at the University of Vienna and gave him recording in the so-called " Klinkowstöm Institute ", a renowned decidedly catholic Schulkonvikt. The home manager Friedrich August von Klinkowstrom (1778-1835) was a convert and a member of the circle around the St. Clement Mary Hofbauer; his son Georg Ernst Joseph Maria von Klinkowstrom (1813-1876) was a Jesuit.

Secular priests

At 17 years, Francis Xavier Weninger chose a spiritual life. He had already studied philosophy, now dogmatics and moral theology were added. In 1828 he was ordained to the priesthood in 1829, he earned a doctorate in theology at the Episcopal seminary in Graz. At the local diocesan seminary, he taught for several years dogmatics. He also served as chaplain at the papal nuncio in Vienna.

Jesuit

After his younger brother Alexander Weninger had become a Jesuit, Francis Xavier Weninger also joined the Society of Jesus on 31 October 1832. He initially worked in Austria and Germany. At this time, elected him to the living in the Styrian Mureck Duchess Maria Carolina of Berry, daughter of the last French king Charles X, to her confessor. In the revolution of 1848 the Jesuits were expelled from Austria and Francis Xavier Weninger went to the USA, where the Order was greatly flourished.

U.S. missionary

The priest dominated addition to his native German and fluent in English and French. He arrived in New York in 1848 and held in the Holy Trinity Church of Williamsburg ( Brooklyn ), his first English sermon. From now on, Father Weninger was restless in North America and Canada as a people traveling missionary, his sermons he held depending on the municipality in German, English or French; he particularly cared about the German-speaking immigrants. During his tenure in the U.S., he organized more than 1000 multi-day parish missions, alone during the year 1854, he is said to have held about 1,000 sermons in various places. He acquired a profound knowledge of the country and people and became an expert on the local mission needs. Therefore, it commissioned the Austrian Leopoldinenstiftung and the Bavarian Ludwig missionary society, to visit the financial support of their ministries in the United States and to report on the conditions there and projects. From this work arose Father Weninger's mission reports to both organizations that provide a colorful picture of the prevailing conditions among immigrants and cultural history are of lasting value. They were at that time published in many magazines and read with great interest. Francis Xavier Weninger was active also as a prolific spiritual writer and has written more than 60 books or magazines. Sometimes he also composed and there are hymns with tunes from him known. 1881 took Weninger in Cartagena, Colombia to the collection and examination of the remains of the slave missionary Peter Claver ( 1580-1654 ) part, which was canonized a few years later. Francis Xavier Weninger developed a great devotion for Claver, who had described himself as a " slave of the Negroes ." He propagated sustained its upcoming canonization and took from now on with special zeal of the socially disadvantaged, colored Catholics.

From 1882 until his death in 1888 lived Weninger in Cincinnati, Ohio / USA, where he also died. A contemporary obituary described him as the " Apostle of the Germans in America."