Karl Leisner

Karl Leisner ( born February 28, 1915 in Rees, † August 12 1945 in Krailling ) is a martyr of the Catholic Church, who died due to the consequences of his incarceration.

Life

Leisner was born in Rees and there in the Parish Church of the Assumption baptized. He pulled in the sixth year of life with his family to Kleve. Here he went to school, met the teachers of religion Vinnenberg Walter, who familiarized him with the ideas of the Catholic youth movement, and made his Abitur in 1934. He studied theology in Münster, where he established forbidden youth groups, with which he to organize free camp there secretly in the Benelux drove. In 1934 appointed him Bishop of Galen diocesan youth group leader. When Reich Labor Service, he organized visits for measurement and other workers, the Gestapo searched his home and his documents.

On March 25, 1939 initiated him Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Münster as a deacon. During a health cure in St. Blaise Leisner was then arrested on 9 November for his criticism of Hitler's Gestapo. He came to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. On December 14, 1941, he was sent to the concentration camp at Dachau ( the priest block this concentration camp, most spiritual prisoners were incarcerated ) admitted. There, the Jesuit Father Otto Pies was his spiritual director, who also promoted his secret ordination prevail. December 17th 1944, inaugurated the also imprisoned in Dachau French Bishop Gabriel Piguet of Clermont -Ferrand with permission from Leisner home bishop, Count von Galen, the young man to the priesthood, after the operating under the code name Mädi nun Josefa Mack the necessary liturgical items had smuggled into the concentration camp. Fellow prisoners had carved a crosier in advance. Leisner was the only one who ever ordained a priest in a concentration camp. His first Mass celebration on December 26, 1944 remained the only Holy Mass, celebrated Leisner. The altar, took place at the ordination and first Mass, is now in the priesthood and Education Centre Mount Moriah in Schoenstatt. The first Mass chalice of Karl Leisner is located in the estate. When the camp was liberated on 29 April 1945, Karl Leisner was so ill that he was admitted to the tuberculosis sanatorium Planegg near Munich. A few months later he died of complications from the disease.

His grave is located in the crypt of the Xanten Cathedral.

Karl Leisner was beatified in Berlin on 23 June 1996 by Pope John Paul II. His feast day is the day he died, August 12. The Diocese of Münster reported on 25 April 2007, that the process for the canonization of Karl Leisner was opened.

Leisner and Schoenstatt

Karl Leisner had met as a teenager, the Schoenstatt Movement, and was a member until the end of his life a Schoenstatt group, which also includes the later bishop of Münster, Heinrich Tenhumberg mattered. Throughout his life remained for Karl Leisner the few but intense times of personal encounter with the Mother of God in the Original Shrine key milestones on his vocational journey. Christ, my passion - guided by this ideal, he worked in the diocesan youth work and fought his way through to his decision to celibate life as a priest. In the Dachau concentration camp, he and Father Josef Fischer, the first Schoenstatt group in the camp, which ended their meeting on hunger in 1942. From 1943 Karl Leisner was part of the group " in Victor vinculis Mariae " and thus the circle of Schoenstatt to the founder P. Kentenich. From this ideal and the communal life with this group Karl Leisner drew the strength his fate, which was impacted in addition to the difficult conditions of a concentration camp pulmonary tuberculosis, in accepting as the will of God, and finally to give his life as a martyr.

In Waldshut the former St. Mary's Chapel was consecrated by the Bishop of Münster Dr. Reinhard Lettmann the Blessed Karl Leisner on August 12, 1996 in Esch Straße ( built in 1930 ).