35 Facts About Joseph Kentenich

Peter Joseph Kentenich, SAC was a German Pallottine priest and founder of the Schoenstatt Apostolic Movement.

Joseph Kentenich was born on November 16,1885, in Gymnich, Erftstadt near Cologne, and baptized "Peter Josef Joseph Kentenich" on 19 November at the parish church of StKuniberts.

Joseph Kentenich's father was Matthias Kop, a manager on a farm in Oberbolheim, where his mother Katharina Kentenich was one of the domestic staff.

In 1894 Joseph Kentenich was sent to St Vincent orphanage in Oberhausen.

In 1897, Joseph Kentenich expressed the wish to become a priest for the first time.

Joseph Kentenich strove for perfection, but felt an incapacity to love God and his neighbor.

Joseph Kentenich later noted that his devotion to Mary allowed him to overcome this crisis and discover the personal love of God.

Joseph Kentenich interpreted the ideas of his order's founder, Vincent Pallotti, as a call for a worldwide effort to involve lay people in apostolic work, and to unite the various factions in the church.

On 18 October 1914, Joseph Kentenich brought together several of his students to found a Marian Congregation.

The speech Joseph Kentenich delivered on this occasion is considered the Schoenstatt Movement's Foundation Act.

Several of the seminarians died during World War I The Servant of God Joseph Engling was killed on 4 October 1918 by a shell in Northern France, next to Thun-Saint-Martin.

Father Joseph Kentenich traveled through all of Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland, to preach retreats and lead training sessions.

Joseph Kentenich observed the rise of Nazism with concern, ranking it among the products of what he called "the idealistic and mechanistic thinking" that engulfed Europe since the nineteenth century.

In 1933, when the Nazis took power in Germany and closed several religious houses, Joseph Kentenich quickly sent groups of the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary to South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay to allow the movement to survive in case the persecution of the Church in Germany intensified.

On 20 September 1941, Joseph Kentenich was summoned by the Gestapo.

Joseph Kentenich was then transferred to a prison in Koblenz, a former Carmelite convent.

Joseph Kentenich spent 5 months there, after which he was sent on to Dachau concentration camp, where he was held until the end of the war.

When Joseph Kentenich was sent to Dachau in March 1942, there were 12,000 prisoners, including 2,600 priests.

On 19 March 1943 Joseph Kentenich celebrated his first Mass at the camp and later gave nightly talks to his fellow prisoners.

Joseph Kentenich came under the protection of the "kapo", a communist named Guttmann, after Guttman saw Joseph Kentenich sharing his daily bread and soup with another detainee.

Joseph Kentenich restarted his apostleship each time he was transferred into a new block.

Joseph Kentenich wrote treaties on spirituality and prayers, as well as a didactic poem of over 20,000 verses.

Joseph Kentenich immediately restarted his work, in order to establish a barrier against those whom he considered the biggest dangers to the world: communism in the East, and practical materialism in the West.

In March 1947, Joseph Kentenich was received in a private audience by Pope Pius XII.

Joseph Kentenich thanked the Pope for the publication, two days earlier, of the constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia, which created the Secular Institutes.

Joseph Kentenich responded by writing a long document on the work of Schoenstatt which was presented as a cure for what he saw as the disease of Western thought, idealism.

For Joseph Kentenich, Schoenstatt was an antidote to this poison, as it is not an abstract theory but a practical application of Christian doctrine.

Puzzled by the unconventional terminology used by Joseph Kentenich, he accused him of being an agitator, an innovator, and a sectarian.

In 1959, Joseph Kentenich was appointed as parish priest of the German-speaking Catholic community of Milwaukee.

In October 1965, Joseph Kentenich was reinstated at the direction of the Movement.

Joseph Kentenich stressed the fatherhood of God and that of the priesthood in the Church, especially the episcopate.

On 15 September 1968, on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, Joseph Kentenich celebrated Mass at the recently inaugurated Church of the Adoration.

Joseph Kentenich is buried in the Church of the Adoration.

Life-size sculptures of Joseph Kentenich, created by American artist Gwendolyn Gillen, now stand outside Schoenstatt chapels in Lamar, Texas, Pewaukee, Wisconsin, Rome, Puerto Rico and many other countries.

Joseph Kentenich claimed that these accusations were the reason for Kentenich's investigation by Fr.