Artikelserie über Abt Franz

[This is the first in a series about the founder of Mariannhill Missionaries, Abbot Francis Pfanner.]

Abbot Francis Pfanner the founder of Mariannhill was a Trappist and a very dynamic missionary. If no one wants to go, I will, was his reply to a bishop in 1879 who pleaded for Trappists to help evangelize the people of South Africa. Prior Francis had struggled for nine years to establish the monastery of Mariastern in Muslim-governed Bosnia and was about to become abbot. Waiving that honor, he chose to make the Christian faith and values known to people who were generally regarded as Christ’s least brothers and sisters. Francis Pfanner set out with a band of thirty-three Trappist monks to completely unknown horizons. What they found was a merciless sun beating upon a wilderness of sand, stones and cacti. Their hearts fell, but the prior, with accustomed determination, put new hope in them: God has brought us here to found the new monastery Mary Dunbrody and he will not bandon us. Like Cortez in Mexico I swear that I will not retreat. In the spirit of ora et labora (work and pray) they went to work, trying to wrest a living from the barren ground. Their efforts were doomed: for two years the heavens remained closed. The local river did not carry enough water to run the vacuum pump, and the fine breed bull, which the bishop had bought from the stables of the Duke of Norfolk, perished. Still the pioneers plodded on. Expert agriculturalists, they cultivated the ground and carefully watched the growth of their mealies (maize) and beans – as also did the thievish monkeys in the nearby bush. No matter how much noise the brothers made to chase the predators, they still made off with the crop, and whatever they left was finished off by swarms of voracious locusts. It was a desperate battle that entered its decisive stage when the bishop declared that he could no longer maintain the Trappists. Therefore, Prior Francis, who was not willing to abandon the mission, appealed to benefactors. During the day he worked alongside his brothers, at night he wrote letters and articles. These he duplicated on a hand press and, folding the pages together, produced a simple news bulletin – FLYING LEAVES FROM MARY DUNBRODY, the forerunner of the LEAVES magazine in which this article appears. Francis Pfanner had a gifted pen. His graphic descriptions of the hardships they endured are as gripping today as they were in 1880. But while making the Trappist mission known, his reports could not turn the tables in their favor. In 1882 the monks left Dunbrody for Natal to establish a ew monastery there – Mariannhill, of which Prior Francis became the first abbot in 1885. At the request of influential chiefs Mariannhill acquired land and opened mission stations in outlying areas. These were destined to be its glory and downfall. For not only did expansion deplete the resources of the monks, but evangelization in remote areas also brought them into serious conflict with their rule. Unlike full-fledged mission societies, Trappists did not qualify for aid from Catholic associations. Therefore, Abbot Francis, now the sole provider for the monastery and its missions, had to think of other ways to support Mariannhill. When he was in Europe attending the general chapters of his order, he traveled extensively with only his breviary and an apple in his pocket. An accomplished speaker, Abbot Francis was invited to churches, clubs, and casinos. No platform was too high or humble, as long as Christ was preached! He even adressed fellow passengers on a boat. He reminded his audiences that the mission mandate is universal and that all, young and old, rich and poor, must be engaged in it as much as their means and social standing allowed. His invitation to come to Mariannhill was hard to resist. Entire families followed him. Seeing this recurring exodus, people nicknamed him The Pied Piper of Mariannhill. But others considered the fiery missionary in a monk’s cowl a rebel, apt to revolutionize the entire mission concept with his newfangled ideas and methods. Abbot Francis was unperturbed. One of his more spectacular initiatives was inviting women to work with the Trappists, arguing that just as the Mother of God took a great part in the work of our redemption, so also shall women share with us the work of evangelization; we men cannot do it alone. He was acting in response to a crying need for education and training for thousands of African youngsters. While his monks instructed the future husbands and fathers in the faith and provided vocational training in their workshops, the women volunteers (the future Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood) educated the prospective wives and mothers. Under Abbot Francis all discrimination was taboo: I cannot stand this making of distinctions, as if it mattered to God what color of skin one is. Implanting Christian values in the young would hopefully speed the growth of a viable local church in a Catholic surrounding. Mariannhill quickly became widely known in Europe and North America. The Mariannhill printing press supplied newspapers, calendars, liturgical and educational books in more than a dozen languages. Even at age 80, Abbot Francis urged new approaches to evangelization. He criticized the custom of missionary societies claiming exclusive ownership of territories as a counter-witness to Christian ideals. He proposed a new missionary society under the sole direction of Propaganda Fide. He called for a conference of missionaries to exchange experiences and ideas. For the salvation of souls he impressed on his monks and sisters the need to be what Pope John Paul II later called „contemplatives in action.“ In 1906 the sisters obtained papal approval; in 1909 Mariannhill was separated from the Trappist Order and established as a missionary congregation (CMM).

In Redemptoris Missio (1990) Pope John Paul II wrote: The missionary must be a „contemplative in action.“ He finds answers to problems in the light of God’s word and in personal and community prayer. My contact with representatives of the non-Christian spiritual traditions, particularly those of Asia, has confirmed me in the view that the future of mission work depends to a great extent on contemplation. Unless the missionary is a contemplative, he cannot proclaim Christ in a credible way. He is a witness to the experience of God, and must be able to say with the Apostles: „That which we have looked upon … concerning the word of life … we proclaim also to you“ (I Jn 1:1-3). The truth of these words is vividly brought out in the life of Abbot Francis Pfanner, Trappist contemplative and missionary. Contemplation and the greatest activity were naturally joined in him. Intimate union with God in prayer was the soul of his apostolate, which can be summarized by the Benedictine motto, Ora et Labora [pray and work], engraved above the entrance to the Mariannhill Monastery. It was the motto by which his predecessors in the Order, the Benedictine and Cistercian monks of old, evangelized Europe. Prayer that gives meaning to work made Francis Pfanner confident, courageous and committed. Perhaps the finest fruit of his contemplative life is this undaunted spirit of trust. Trust is the flowering of hope. By living beyond one’s own narrow confines, tensions are overcome, the ideal and real are reconciled, and strength and task reinforce each other. In Abbot Francis’s case the monastic and apostolic lifestyles became compatible. But this is possible only when a person is deeply rooted in Christ and focused on Christ. The abbot’s motto, Run so as to Win the Prize, illustrates his overriding passion for Christ. With St. Paul, whom he resembled in many ways, he could say, All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share His sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death … I have not yet won, but I am still running to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me (Phil 3: 10-12). Abbot Francis’s contemplativemissionary life is mainly a demonstration lesson in hope against hope. His trust in Divine Providence was boundless. Like St. Paul he could have drawn up a long list of sufferings that he freely underwent in the endeavor to carry out Christ’s great commission. How often did he go penniless into a new venture! How many times left alone with his worries and cares! His foundations of Mariastern in Bosnia, Mary Dunbrody and Mariannhill in South Africa and of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood all seemed to be doomed from the beginning. Humanly speaking, only a fool would have dared what he dared. But then he was a fool . . . for Christ. Through suffering the founder learned to cast all his cares on the Lord. It was a lesson that lent strength to his hands and wisdom to his words. Despairing of a good outcome to a good cause is the most foolish mistake of all, for God is good and will not be outdone in generosity. His indefatigable hope gave him courage and initiative for bold new ventures. He reveled in difficulties. They were the best assurance that an inspiration came from God, for the Lord tests those he loves, but the devil acts only from envy. His visions were as limitless as the desire to spread the Gospel. Nothing could deter him. Rather, courage grows with every danger bravely faced. As a youngster, he had loved to conquer the snow-capped peaks of his native Austria; later God’s grace built on this natural disposition and made him stand like a rock in the face of insurmountable obstacles. His hope and trust were strong enough to carry all that God entrusted to him. Abbot Francis practiced fortitude to a heroic degree. I can do all things in him who strengthens me (Phil 4:13). Crises did not break, but purified, him. Submission to the will of God helped him to bear his cross with patience, making him calm and mature. His example teaches a profound lesson: You can only share what you have yourself. You can spend yourself only for a cause for which you are on fire! Religious founders are considered prophets in their time. Filled with God’s creative energy, they often give new expressions to old traditions. Providence appoints them and gives them a mission so that they in turn can be heralds and agents to usher in a new springtime in the Church. They pass on to others what they have perceived in contemplating God in prayer. As God’s collaborators, they are trailblazers and pacesetters for reform. This does not mean that they are without fault. On the contrary, they have to contend with their own unruly tendencies – I must admit that I was often too impatient. In my impulsiveness I sometimes became impudent and rude (Abbot Francis). They stand as much in need of grace as anyone else. Their greatness rather lies in trustful reliance on God alone. The strength of Abbot Francis’s contemplative-missionary commitment is seen in his untiring work, especially when it earned him nothing but rejection and defamation. Suffering such unjust treatment for many years without complaint rendered his commitment heroic. He did not succumb to humiliation, even with his ill-advised removal from office. Rather, with unbroken spirit he declared, I am still the old progressive. I am for progress down to the marrow of my bones. Every fiber of me is progressive …. Steam has conquered the world, and it is time that we also apply steam to evangelization. In his eighties he wrote, I would still go to Europe today and make my voice heard from the Dnieper River [Russia] to the Thames: „Thy Kingdom come!“ May such a powerful example still inspire many Christians today to be contemplatives-in-action.

Mariannhill’s founder, Abbot Francis, was imbued with a fervent missionary spirit. He was very conscious of being sent and equally eager to follow God’s call. His missionary engagement stemmed from a personal gift or charism, an endowment of the Holy Spirit that is not under human control. It aims at salvation in Christ for oneself and others. The Trappist founder/monk who enriched the Church with two monasteries, an extensive mission network and the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood in the 19th century was a charismatic leader. This is evidenced by the fact that his love of God and his sense of justice did not allow him to comply with rules that obstructed God’s call. His charism led him to strengthen the Church in Bosnia and to take the Gospel to the local people of South Africa Abbot Francis called contemplatives to active evangelization and invited lay people to heed Christ’s great commission. It is fascinating to see how his organizing genius planned to send sisters as flying squads to countries where Christians suffered persecution: Lebanon, the Cameroons, Sudan, China, Australia and Russia. His missionary zeal, stirring first in the seminary, matured fully as he trod his way to Calvary, working tirelessly, fighting nerve-wracking lawsuits, suffering sickness, disappointments, rejection, isolation and condemnation. The meaning of his trials becomes clearer now in the perspective of a hundred years. When Abbot Francis died, 28 out of the 49 mission stations between the Cape of Good Hope and the Zambezi River in southern Africa, were founded by Mariannhill. This is a record unique in modern mission history, considering the fact that the missionaries were contemplative monks and that there was only one Catholic mission for local people when they started. In 1909 Mariannhill Trappists and sisters were evangelizing in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and the Congo. The efforts they made were tremendous and the results impressive. With good reason did Thomas Merton call Mariannhill a phenomenon. He wrote: „Here was an astounding spectacle of a Trappist mission where contemplative monks achieved in a few years a spectacular success, far greater than any active orders ever dared to dream of. Jesuit missionaries came from the Lower Zambezi to Mariannhill to seek advice on missionary methods.“ Abbot Francis’s venture was audacious and possible only in faith. He faced public opposition and hostility. In a letter to the Natal Mercury, he strongly rejected the view that silent monks should not take on pastoral work. He reminded the readers of their own Christian history: „St. Augustine came from Rome – I came from Bosnia. He was sent by Pope St. Gregory the Great – I received my mandate from [Blessed] Pope Pius IX. He landed in England with 40 monks – I landed in the Cape with only 30.“ Abbot Francis pointed out that the first missionaries in Europe were all monks, engaged in building monasteries … and evangelization. Like them, he too was convinced that a viable Church required stable social structures. Better fields – better homes – better hearts, the motto of one of his most outstanding sons of faith, Bernard Huss, reflects Abbot Francis’s own approach to evangelization. The view of evangelization held by Abbot Francis was further marked by an open-door policy that made everyone feel welcome, regardless of ethnic origin, color or social status. He did not listen to objections from Boers or Englishmen in this regard: „All boys in our institute receive free bed, board and instruction, regardless of whether they are pagan, Muslim, Protestant or Catholic, white, black or colored, English, Dutch, German, Italian, Indian or local African.“ Under Abbot Francis everything was harnessed to attract people to the faith. The silent example of his hard-working prayerful brothers was perhaps the most powerful sermon. But the founder also „staged“ colorful baptisms and processions and had an ox slaughtered after the service to give the converts an opportunity to celebrate their newly found faith in good African fashion. Being a trailblazer in various fields, as early as 1887 Abbot Francis sent the first young men to Rome to study for the priesthood. The first Zulu priest came from Mariannhill. In his efforts to expand the mission so as to make the local church more viable, Abbot Francis, as God’s Trumpeter, traveled abroad to solicit support and vocations. No missionary since Bernard of Clairvaux received as many postulants as Abbot Francis. Mission at that time generally referred to America or China. Africa was the Dark Continent, unknown to most. Abbot Francis made mission appeals in countless public appearances and, above all, in the Mariannhill magazines and calendars. 100,000 copies of the first Mariannhill almanac, each 180 pages, were printed. The paper had to be brought in from Durban by oxcart and work continued around the clock for four months. The printed products were then shipped to Europe and, from there, distributed in North America and Australia. It was a risk for Abbot Francis, but nothing was too big or too difficult for him. He once said, „Heights challenge [His home village was surrounded by mountains.] Courage and energy increase with every danger faced fearlessly.“ After he was removed from the office of abbot, his missiona1y zeal became all the more fervent through suffering during 15 long years. Ten months before he died, at the age of 84, he wrote from Emaus, the last station he founded: „The sisters seem to be most needed in China now … Before going there, it is necessary to know where the future railway and river steamers will pass. In such a vast empire easy connections are paramount, otherwise travel will swallow up the mission funds and much precious time … “ „The pity is that I am not just 30. If I were, it would be my pleasure to go ahead of you to explore suitable sites for new missions … “ „Sometimes when I cannot sleep, visions such as these take on gigantic proportions before my inner eye. Trust me, it is hard for me to believe that they should all come to nothing.“ They did not, although the founder did not live to see his visions come true.

The Bible’s teaching on suffering may be summarized in the words No cross, no crown. Abbot Francis, the founder of Mariannhill, pursued the crown of holiness, fully aware that he could not attain it without suffering. He had a full share of human misery in its different forms – physical and spiritual. He suffered sickness, loss, disappointment, defamation, rejection, isolation, and loneliness. He carried his cross courageously, his love and faith keeping him from being crushed by it. Some crosses stemmed from his tendency toward frail health and from natural temperament, but most of his sufferings were inflicted on him by others. Their sheer multitude and intensity compel our greatest respect for a man who, in spite of all, accomplished so much. According to his Memoirs, his first serious encounter with sickness was a severe case of pneumonia and meningitis in the seminary. He had to interrupt his studies for three months and in his final year was judged unsuited to work in the American missions, as had been his wish. In his second year of parish ministry he suffered from general weakness, accompanied by persistent coughing. He took whey-diet treatments for seven years, but proneness to colds and hoarseness and colic spells remained. His physician gave him only three more years to live, after becoming seriously ill several times between 1859 and 1863. Upon this diagnosis he decided to become a Trappist in order to prepare for death. Before entering, he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; he fell seasick and picked up an intestinal inflammation. Once in the monastery, his condition improved unexpectedly. Only bursitis of the knee from prolonged kneeling confined him to the infirmary for three months. During a nine-months stay in Rome he contracted malaria, a sickness that marked his physical condition for life. Before leaving his monastery of Mariastern to go to South Africa, he was bedridden for three months but would not call a doctor. People in Munich rumored that he had died. When he recovered, his feet became swollen with water, a sign of cardiac insufficiency, and he could hardly walk. On the boat he was the only one to suffer from severe seasickness, probably due to his overall weak condition and hypersensitive stomach. He wrote: „I lay for many days on two crates under the staircase …. I lived only on fresh air and … became as lean as a rake …. I saw only the sky and the ocean that tortured my half-dead body …. “ But he was not deterred from making the round trip four more times. Traveling along the east coast of Africa, he had dysentery and was forced to return to South Africa. However, an outbreak of smallpox, a severe storm and a flood did not allow him to disembark at any port of call. At age sixty-five he suffered severe stomach pain, which he interpreted as cancer. Three months later he recovered, after the sisters and brothers had held a novena to the Sacred Heart for his recovery. Nine months later he embarked again for Europe and became so seasick that he „only longed for land or for death … even in apparent danger feeling no desire to pray.“ His only consolation was that on the high sea he could shorten the pains of his future purgatory. During his return trip he could say Mass only once in four weeks. On arrival, he fell sick (typhoid?) and recovered only after many months. One would think that he had enough of traveling, but no, he said,“ I would gladly be seasick many times over if I could save one immortal soul.“ When he turned seventy at Emaus, his place of retirement, his superior wrote, „Abbot Francis is suffering from dropsy and it seems that death is slowly approaching.“ At age eighty he began to suffer from arteriosclerosis. His voice was too feeble to preach or give counsel in confession, and he also required assistance for dressing himself and for saying Mass. During the last three years of his life his eyes were too dim and his hands too shaky to celebrate Mass at all. Finally, he was but a bundle of misery and pain, yet mentally he remained alert until death. Two men were crucified with Jesus. One believed in Him and died in peace, the other clung to his despair. Peter denied Him and wept tears of repentance, Judas betrayed Him and hanged himself. Whether suffering is a means of growth and happiness depends very much on the attitude taken towards it. It is a great grace to be able to suffer with the suffering Savior. Jesus transformed suffering by willingly taking it upon Himself in obedience to the Father and for love of us. Suffering is unbearable only when it is meaningless; for believers it is the touchstone of faith. It was Abbot Francis’s deep faith, nourished by prayer and sacrifice, from which he derived the strength to suffer without succumbing. He neither complained about pain nor did he use it as an excuse for shirking duties. Rather, he was distressed that sickness kept him from work and from reaching his goals. Neither was it masochism that made him long for more suffering, but the conviction that suffering in this world is necessary for our maturing and that we are called „to share in Christ’s suffering so as to share his glory“ (Rom 8:17). With St. Paul he rejoiced over the sufferings in his own body by which he could make up all „that was still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church“ (Col 1:24). It was from this attitude that he could say on his eightieth birthday, „Do not pray that my sufferings may be mitigated … pray rather for the grace of a happy death“ and, „God sends us sufferings and adversities for our own good.“ During the last months of his life he suffered immensely, but even then without complaint. Thus he testified that, in union with Christ, suffering can indeed be a blessing for all.

Abbot Francis tells us that he found mental and spiritual sufferings harder to bear than physical pain and sickness. He was given a good share of both, psychological suffering certainly aggravating his ill health. He lost his mother when he was age three. As a teenager he was constantly teased about his red hair, which was commonly associated with deviousness of character. His first parish resented his appointment as pastor and gave him an icy reception. His highest superior in the order, though accepting his vow of stability, illegally dismissed him after five years. Fr. Francis appealed against this action and won the case. However, the order delayed his solemn profession of vows for three years, and relations between him and the order remained permanently strained. Fr. Francis founded Mariastern in Bosnia and, after ten years of labor and nerve-racking opposition from hostile officials, waived the prospect of becoming its first abbot and went instead to do mission work in Africa. The farewell was hard: „I can honestly say that, if ever I made a sacrifice in my life, it was leaving my beloved Mariastern.“ The first foundation in Africa was a failure, partly because of serious misunderstandings with the bishop; however, the second one, Mariannhill, flourished. But the bishop still had an account to settle. Seven years later he demanded that Mariannhill pay him, with interest, money which the bishop had regarded as a loan, but which Abbot Francis had understood to be a gift to pay off debts he had incurred for Mariastern that he did not wish to leave to his successor. Rome decided in the bishop’s favor. Abbot Francis was deeply hurt. Another time an anonymous person in Rome wrongly accused him and there was little he could do to defend himself. What offended his keen sense of justice far more than anything else was his suspension from office for one year in 1892, again without the right to appeal. After only seven months the suspension was, in essence, changed into dismissal. He was asked to come to Rome, but he had to decline for health reasons. He was isolated from the monks and from the sisters he had founded. This humiliation before all the world – a Trappist abbot is normally elected for life – grieved him to the end of his life. Great disappointment came to the aging founder when he realized that the very things for which he had been penalized were practiced freely under his successor. He could not protest, even when there were efforts to turn the sisters meant for mission work into Trappistine nuns. Only in 1903 at a conference that discussed their future did he insist on having a say as their founder. As a result he was branded a troublemaker and excluded from the last crucial sessions. He stated in a letter, „I have positive proof that there are some among my sons E who can’t wait until I die.“ Abbot Francis felt isolated and ignored. The hopes he had placed in the administrator, who was appointed after the third abbot of Mariannhill had resigned, were dashed with regard to better governance and a revival of the old spirit. There was no one to whom Abbot Francis could unburden himself. He pleaded: „I haven’t had a chance to go to confession for three months…. For many thousands of people I have provided priests and I myself must die of hunger. If only I could get a confessor once a month …. “ The administrator reacted by tightening the censorship of his letters and admonishing him when he thought Abbot Francis did not obey. That hurt him beyond telling. He wrote, „Never in my life did a man disappoint me as much as this man.“ No less painful than the personal trials and misfortunes were the worries and anxieties Abbott Francis had concerning the success of his undertakings. No sooner had he been authorized by the Church to found a monastery in Bosnia, local officials refused to grant him the necessary licenses. His patience was tried to the limit of endurance when after an endless waiting time their replies were negative. During the first winter in Bosnia almost all his fellow monks left him, so that on New Year’s Eve he was left with only three novices, one of whom died shortly afterwards. At the height of the Bosnian revolt his monastery would have been destroyed, except for Our Lady’s powerful intervention. Arriving two years later in South Africa, he experienced serious disappointment when, instead of a fine site for a monastery and mission, he found only sand and thistles and a bishop who soon declared bankruptcy. The same bishop had him removed as prior, and it was only after great internal difficulties that he was able to found Mariannhill. This was a success in many ways, but not without anguish about its continuation and future. His removal from office made him look on helplessly as monks and missionaries, Trappists all, fought each other and threatened to tear his work to pieces. Yet, ultimately it is not the trial which is decisive, but the way it is suffered. Abbot Francis occasionally sought consolation from his confreres, but he spent much more time reflecting on the meaning of his humiliations and praying for the grace to be able to unite them with the sufferings of the Lord. His examples were St. Athanasius and St. Alphonsus. With his own hands he erected an impressive Way of the Cross on the Mount of Calvary in Emmaus and he climbed its 174 steps every day. The humiliating circumstances of the last 15 years of his life were the subject of his meditations. Under Mary’s guidance Abbot Francis learned to resign himself without bitterness: „We should … look at the Silent Cross Bearer. But alas, we are ill-disposed, make a long face and are resentful towards those who stepped on our toes …. It is necessary to act like Jesus did.“ Abbot Francis, pray for us.

When Jesus commissioned His Twelve Apostles, He said, „Remember, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be cunning as serpents and yet as harmless as doves“ (Mt 10:16). Abbot Francis was a Trappist who burned to bring the Gospel to people who did not yet know Christ. Like St. Paul, he was a chosen instrument in God’s hands. Endowed with rare gifts of intellect, will, imagination and sheer inexhaustible energy, he worked tirelessly to spread God’s Kingdom. He could be as cunning as a serpent when a man-made law threatened to prevent him from achieving this purpose. The 10 years he labored in Bosnia were marked by endless troubles with neighboring Muslims and members of the schismatic Orthodox Church who objected to the monks‘ presence. This was the time of the Ottoman Empire when Catholics were treated like serfs. Only with the help of clandestine Franciscan friars was he finally able to make a new foundation. But extreme care had to be exercised so that no one found out that Mariastern was in fact a Trappist monastery. The local pasha would not give him permission to construct a stone building with as many rooms as a Turkish nobleman had. So Prior Francis went to Istanbul to appeal to the grand vizier (chief minister to the sultan), well aware that the pasha was conspiring to have him killed along the way. To outwit him, Prior Francis traveled by train and steamer rather than on horseback. He dressed like a Turkish magistrate and actually posed in this colorful outfit for a street painter. This portrait was later discovered, painted over with a crucifix. Prior Francis succeeded in obtaining a license for a house with sixty rooms. Bells were forbidden, but what was a monastery without a bell? This time the brothers found a solution. They smuggled two bells past the border patrol by fitting them into empty wine kegs, sealed them and brought them undetected to Mariastern. There they rang them, only to call an enraged pasha to the scene, demanding that the monks take them down. Prior Francis was summoned to court where judge and jurors alike were already eagerly awaiting baksheesh (bribe), but he would not give them a single ducat. As a landowner, he had the right to call his workers together. „But why do the ropes of your bells end in your prayer room?“ they asked. „Because that is where we keep the clock that tells us when to ring,“ he replied. They asked again, „And why do you ring two different bells?“ He told them that one called his servants (brothers) and the other his hired laborers. That settled the case. Prior Francis had won a substantial increase in freedom for the Catholic Church in Bosnia. The early days of the Trappist pioneers in South Africa in 1880 were difficult. Not only did they suffer from unfavorable conditions, but also from disagreements over who had the final responsibility for them – Prior Francis or the bishop. The prior had handpicked the brothers from his monastery of Mariastern, most of whom he had admitted to religious life. But he was a thorn in the bishop’s side. Eventually the bishop succeeded in having the self-determined founder removed and would have had a French prior appointed, but he had not reckoned with the brothers‘ attachment to their prior. Fr. Francis was in Rome at the time and in a tight spot. He had to obey orders without, however, disappointing his brothers. So, as was his custom, he prayed over the matter and discovered a way out of the dilemma. He wrote to his brothers in the form of an ultimatum: „You either stay in Dunbrody but without me, or you return to Mariastern where I will still be your lawful superior. If you move to Natal, I will join you there and together we will make a new foundation.“ The brothers opted for the third choice and Fr. Francis acted immediately. „With the letter of dismissal in my right and their reply in my left, I hurried to the Roman office just in time to prevent the decree from going into effect.“ The bishop of Natal welcomed the Trappists, and on 26 December 1882 Mariannhill was founded. In Natal the bishop wanted only French sisters for his vicariate. But since this did not suit Abbot Francis, he used a clever strategy. He called laywomen, not sisters, to Mariannhill to teach the local girls. He gave them attractive red skirts and white blouses to remind them of the Precious Blood and of the need to spread joy. The next time the bishop visited Mariannhill, he introduced the laywomen as his mission helpers. Only later when these women decided to take vows, did he need to consult the bishop again. By that time there were no more objections, and eventually the Church approved Abbot Francis’s Red Sisters as the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood. In 1893 news reached Abbot Francis of 12 fine farms to be auctioned off in Griqualand (Eastern Cape). The prospect of acquiring a new mission station in those exclusively Protestant areas was irresistible. He consulted with Br. Nivard Streicher, architect and builder, and dispatched him on the fastest horse to explore the area. Scouting around, Nivard fell in love with the snowcapped mountains and full-flowing rivers. But they had to hatch a plan to acquire the land. Br. Nivard was to join the auction, disguised as a typical English gentleman, with beard trimmed and face half covered under a broad cap. He succeeded perfectly. Before the out-bidden settlers could think, he had already sped away. A year later feelings were calmed down and it was safe for the Trappists to drive up on their ox carts and found the mission – Mariazell, so named after the famous Marian shrine in Austria. Again, Abbot Francis had not allowed a human law to frustrate what he recognized was God’s will for Africa.

The Mother of Jesus is sometimes called the First Missionary. When she visited Elizabeth, it was to share the Good News she had received with someone who was ready to acknowledge the mercy God showed His people and rejoice with her. Without Mary the Gospel would not have been written, but without apostles and missionaries it would also not be proclaimed. Francis Pfanner was chosen by God to be a messenger of the Good News, first as a parish priest and later as a missionary. It was the time of Marian renewal in the Church. In 1854 Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, followed in 1858 by Mary’s apparitions under the same title in Lourdes. With Mary’s help Fr. Pfanner enabled people to rejoice in the salvation Christ won for them. Before entering the seminary, he dedicated himself to Mary at her shrine in Einsiedeln, Switzerland. Not only was she his guide to Jesus, but also to the hearts of the people to whom he ministered. This was evident in the nine years he served as parish priest in his native Austria (1850-59). It was a difficult ministry, but through prayer and constant solicitude for his flock Fr. Pfanner was able to transform a lukewarm parish into a vibrantly active one. He had stained glass windows of the Annunciation and Visitation installed in his church, a novelty at that time. He also enrolled the youth in The Living Rosary Movement, guiding them to be close to Mary. Fr. Pfanner was grieved by the sight of a neglected shrine in the neighborhood and offered to renovate it and revive the once popular pilgrimages. He did not get that appointment, perhaps because he remarked that he did not especially qualify for the position, „but more likely,“ he wrote, „because Our Lady wanted him to renovate himself first,“ so as to qualify even better for the work God planned for him. In 1863 Fr. Pfanner joined the Reformed Cistercians (Trappists), sons of Saint Bernard- „Minstrel of Our Lady“ and author of the Memorare. The monks honored Mary as the Queen of Citeaux. They sang her praises, signed with her name, dedicated all their houses to her and endeavored to imitate her virtues. Father Francis, as he was now called, developed a deeply Marian spirituality. Mary taught him to „do whatever he tells you“ (Jn 2:5). She led him in unexpected ways. He was asked to establish a new monastery and on Sept. 8, 1869, founded Mariastern [Mary Star] in Bosnia. A seer in Wittelsheim in Alsace, Germany, though ignorant of his identity, told him that she saw the Mother of God blessing him with a star and holding a most beautiful crown above his head. He immediately understood that Mary was blessing Mariastern and inviting him to strive for the crown she offered. Fr. Pfanner stated, „It seemed as if I had heard for the first time that our future reward will be a glorious crown. My resolution – never to spare myself but give even my blood – became like iron and steel.“ In the pursuit of this crown, Fr. Francis endured untold hardships, deprivations, trials and sufferings. Mary led him deeper and deeper into the mystery and joy of salvation, inflaming his heart with love for the souls her Son had redeemed. She also gave him signs of her motherly care. This was particularly evident on the Feast of her Assumption in 1878. Bosnian Serbs were staging an insurrection against the Turkish government. The Trappists found themselves between the insurgents in the forests nearby and the Austrian squads advancing to crush the uprising. In their great need they turned to Mary. „Our hearts were filled with fear,“ wrote Prior Francis, „but never did we implore Mary with greater confidence. When the danger was past and we were safe, we thanked her and St. Joseph from the bottom of our hearts.“ In 1879 a missionary bishop asked the Trappists to establish a mission in South Africa. Prior Francis, though about to be made an abbot, spontaneously led a band of 30 brothers to Cape Province. They were very disappointed by the bleak prospects. In his sermon for the Assumption (1880), Prior Francis consecrated himself, his brothers and the mission to Mary. He said that they were fulfilling the prophecy Mary made in her Magnificat: „We call her blessed in this deserted place that we could fittingly call Maria in Deserto. … I shall try to explain as vividly as possible … what a powerful Patroness and Advocate we have in Mary.“ Thus, he gave his brothers new courage. The Trappists gave all they had but could not make the mission viable. Two years later they founded Mariannhill in Natal Province. The new venture was visibly blessed, developing rapidly into the largest monastery of the Order. Fr. Francis became abbot in 1885. Under his energetic leadership mission stations were opened to serve the local people. Each station was dedicated to Our Lady under a different title. Her spiritual sons taught the first African converts to turn to her with confidence. The Salve Regina, chanted by the brothers as they filed home from work in the evening, was probably the first Christian hymn African children heard, and the Angelus the first prayer they were taught to say when the bell rang. In 1892 tension between the monastic and missionary vocation of the Mariannhill Trappists reached a critical stage. Abbot Francis was removed from office. In the mission church of Einsiedeln he gave his cross and ring to Mary and retired to a remote place that he called Emaus. There, deprived of contact with his brothers and sisters, he spent the remainder of his life. Valiantly he stood with Mary under the Cross for the salvation of souls. And Mary called him home on May 24, 1909, the Feast of Mary Help of Christians. He found his last resting place in Mariannhill.

The Church has always held St. Joseph in high regard, yet the Gospels do not record a single word spoken by St. Joseph. His silence is striking. Many saints have reflected on it in order to imitate his virtue. Most recently it was John Paul II who wrote about Joseph in Redemptoris Custos (St. Joseph in the Life of Christ and of the Church) (1989). Abbot Francis is well known for his devotion to the holy foster father. In his sermons he spoke about Joseph as the just one, the faithful helper in times of need, the reliable pilot and the missionary who traveled to Egypt. He also composed a litany in his honor, confessing that he never called on his heavenly benefactor in vain. He engaged him as treasurer and novice master. The following passages summarize some of his reflections on Joseph the Silent. The story of the Egyptian Joseph gives us a perfect example of the ways of Divine Providence. Joseph recognized that God, not his brothers, sent him to Egypt and made him ruler over the (royal) house for their sake. The same can be said of Joseph of Nazareth: God placed him as head over the Holy Family. He also sent him among people who were far from God. How did St. Joseph support his family? He was a carpenter and probably too poor to own land. Earning a living by trade or business would have been against his quiet, retiring nature. He was also too „just“ and noble-of David’s royal blood-to beg, so he relied on the work of his hands. Thus he is an example to all who labor to earn their living. Joseph’s occupation would also suggest a simple lifestyle, for he could not afford luxury and he was too socialminded to deprive the poor by having things he did not need. What a powerful lesson! If we feel marginalized, St. Joseph can sympathize with us from personal experience. But when will the world recognize that, for better times to come, we must return to simplicity! Just waiting for things to improve is foolish because it keeps us from doing what is required to initiate change. We see Joseph living among unbelievers in Egypt. How fervently would he have prayed for them in words similar to those Zechariah spoke: „Give light to those who live in darkness and the shadow of death.“ Who knows if by their isolated, prayerful life the Holy Family did not perhaps lay the foundation for religious life in Egypt, cradle of western monasticism. From Joseph we learn that we can evangelize anywhere and in all circumstances. The establishment of a great work often requires a sponsor or patron. Now the Church is the greatest establishment on earth and St. Joseph its patron (proclaimed by Pius IX in 1870). From this fact alone we can tell his greatness. It explains why the Church dedicated an entire month (March) to his honor and invokes him in a litany by the most exalted titles. To these I would like to add „Joseph the Silent.“ His silence greatly increased his holiness. Let us examine it, for it reveals admirable virtues. When Joseph could not explain Mary’s pregnancy, he decided to dismiss her „silently.“ Once enlightened by God, he took her into his house „silently.“ But this is not how most people act when they discover anything strange or mysterious in others. They draw attention to it, arouse curiosity and suspicion, and pass premature judgement: „What do you think? Surely, this person is suspicious. Better keep an eye on him.“ Joseph, for his part, had good reason to criticize the census. Instead, he kept silent and quietly went with Mary to Bethlehem. Such silent submission is rare nowadays. Since government officials have turned away from the faith, subjects in turn have lost faith in them. Next we see that innkeepers in Bethlehem had no room for the Holy Family. At this point Joseph surely could have complained to God. After all, he knew that the child to be born was God’s Son. Why then did God not take better care of them? But he silently acknowledged God’s Providence in the imperial order and the reception he got in his own town. When Mary bedded the Child on straw, he fell on his knees to silently adore. The angels sang. The shepherds related their story. The Wise Men brought gifts. But Joseph kept silent. He could have told them about greater marvels than they had seen. He could have boasted with the high position God himself had given him. In short, he could have created quite a stir! But subsequent events prove that he was absolutely right in keeping silent. He kept his integrity and saved the Child. Oh, how often do souls receive great, hidden graces from God, but they spoil and lose everything again by their vain talkativeness and talkative vanity. Joseph commands our greatest respect when, in the night the angel told him to get up and flee to Egypt, he obeyed istantly and silently and did so again when the angel warned him not to return to Judea. Come to think of it Joseph would have been an excellent Evangelist of the Hidden Life. Joseph teaches us a good sort of silence. There would be much less misery in the world if people learned to keep silent. After all, the heaviest crosses are those we make ourselves by talking too much about our own persons and slandering others. Keeping silent about one’s own virtue is holiness. Joseph was not born the powerful patron he is, rather he became so influential through years of self-forgetful, silent service. Precisely because God gave him responsibility for the two holiest persons ever, Joseph is able to take care of the entire Church. He became so great because he remained humble. St. Joseph, pray for us!

These days we witness strange and sometimes unheard of developments in society and in the Church. One of these concerns the Kosovo Albanians. Of them the new bishop of Prizren in Croatia, Dode Gjergji, recently (2007) said that many Muslims return to their Christian roots: „Delegations come every day from the villages to ask us for baptism.“ The conversion of these people points to the special history shared by many Muslims in Bosnia, where Abbot Francis spent eleven years to strengthen the Christian Faith. In Bosnia the Trappist monks were faced with a very complex religious diversity, consisting mainly of Muslims, Orthodox and a remnant of Catholics. A part of Dalmatia in St. Paul’s times, Bosnia is one of the oldest Christian countries in Europe. In the sixth century it had already four dioceses, but during the Migration of Peoples (from about AD 300-700), Christianity practically disappeared, to be revived only five hundred years later. When in 1463 Bosnia became a province of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, mosques were built to replace churches. Christian business people who had betrayed their own people to Turkey turned Muslim in great numbers. In the 16th century the Turks brought in Orthodox settlers from Serbia whose animosity against Catholics had been strengthened during the time the Crusaders occupied Constantinople (1204-1261). Many Orthodox churches in Bosnia were built on the ruins of they were so interesting, we have asked Catholic churches and monasteries. When the Trappists entered Bosnia in 1869, the Orthodox clergy far outnumbered Catholic priests, the majority of whom were Franciscans. The Sultan had given the Franciscans the exclusive right of Catholic ministry across almost all the Balkan Peninsula. As for the Orthodox, during the first 200 years they had helped the Turks wage their wars, but when they began to crave land of their own, they were also treated like Rajahs (deprived Catholics who had preserved their faith and been forced to become tenants of their Muslim overlords under whom they experienced bitter oppression). The 500 Orthodox parish priests were as poor as their Franciscan counterparts. Extortion and exploitation thrived. The parishes paid the taxes owed to the Sultan. However, the Orthodox were not tenants subject to aristocratic landlords. They paid one gold ducat a year, not the heavy fines under which the Catholics groaned. The Orthodox priests memorized their Mass texts because they were largely illiterate. Ignorance and superstition among ordinary people flourished in Bosnia. The Rajahs were totally dependent on the landlords and the immigrant Turks who served the Sultan as army officers. Many Catholics were pressured into Orthodoxy by Serbian clergy. The ex-Christian Muslims and Orthodox were a military, but landless, aristocracy. Rajahs faced severe trials of faith from them. Many were tortured to death together with their Franciscan priests. In the long run Turkish oppression thrived on the religious hatred between Orthodox and Catholics. Faced with this system of injustice and oppression, Fr. Francis felt challenged to do whatever he could to strengthen the Christian Faith. At Mariastern he not only became pastor once again but also active missionary. The Feast of Corpus Christi offered him a welcome chance. The monastery had a population of some 60 people, brothers and Catholic building workers from Croatia and Italy, enough to hold a procession, perhaps the first in 400 years! In his Letters from the Vrbas River, Fr. Francis described what they did at Mariastern: „At sunrise our neighbors were already busy in meadows and fields to pick flowers for a joyful offering to the feast. As they had never experienced anything like this before, they wondered what we would do with the flowers. Not so our Catholic workers and artisans. They stripped basketfuls of leaves from oaks and beeches to strew on the road that the procession would take. We marched forth in orderly fashion, led by the cross that was carried in full view of friends and foes of the Crucified alike. Then followed our hired hands and tradesmen, each holding a burning candle and wearing a European [not Turkish] suit. The brothers and priests with candles and censer walked in front of the Holy of Holies, over which two masons, dressed in the gray costumes of their native Tyrol, held a canopy. Bosnian Catholics, some wearing shoes, others barefoot, walked behind the Sanctissimum, all praying their Oce nas [Our Fathers] with great devotion and visible joy. The nightingales from the nearby edge of the wood accompanied us with soaring scales of majestic chorales and the larks warbled their merry morning hymns in harmony. These songsters seemed to know what Bosnia ignored: it was the Lord of Hosts, the Son of Man Himself who most royally walked our streets! – Only the sound of bells was missing. But this should be blamed neither on the Turks nor on us, for all we lack is the metal to make them.“ As it turned out, Mariastern soon got its bells and the Christians their freedom, when seven years later Austria occupied Bosnia.

In 1869 under the leadership of Fr. Francis Pfanner, the Trappists founded the monastery of Mariastern in Bosnia, when that country had been under Turkish rule for 400 years. Mariastern became a bulwark of the Christian Faith and over the years inspired the few remaining Catholics with new life and hope. Recognizing his missionary vocation, Prior Francis thought of ways to gain them greater recognition and better living conditions. He started with Eucharistic devotion. A Corpus Christi procession was held again after it had been lost in oblivion for generations. The effect on the people was so satisfying that he wrote about it in his Letters from the Vrbas River. These Letters describe daily life in Bosnia and hold up the example of the strong faith of the Christian minority there. They were published by a priest friend in Austria in a paper he founded to promote the Catholic cause. Prior Franz asked the readers to come forward to donate a bell to Mariastern to boost the Catholic morale in the midst of a dominantly Muslim and Greek Orthodox society. The bell „will have the honorable and important task of ringing out the Christian message every day across the wide Vrbas Valley. It will knock on the ears of the Muezzin on his minaret long before he calls the Muslims to prayer“ and even more often, thereby demonstrating that „Christians pray more than Muslims.“ His appeal was taken up. In 1871 the housekeeper of his priest friend and publisher donated a small bell, the first for Bosnia in centuries. However, bells were prohibited. To overcome this obstacle, the brothers devised a plan to smuggle it into the country. The year 1871 happened to be a wine year for two of Bosnia’s bordering countries, Croatia and Slavonia (today a province of Croatia), through which the bell had to pass. Therefore, wine being cheap, the brothers bought an empty keg, put the bell in it, and filled it up with wine. When they came to the border, they paid customs for the wine but not for the submerged bell. „Well,“ said the founder, „we paid for it,“ so for the first time the monks got wine to drink. The carpenter made a small contraption on the monastery roof and the bell was fixed in place. That done, Prior Francis ordered to ring it, softly at first and only during the early morning hours to call the monks to Matins. But when the expected protests did not happen, it was rung more boldly and after some time also in broad daylight – „even as we pleased.“ After this small success the prior had only one more bell installed out of a total of six offered. This one had come by boat as far as the border and had then been tucked among other wares, ferried across the river and hidden in a pile of hay on a wagon a brother was driving home. Thanks to a language problem, it had not been detected: „The brother, who spoke only German, actually declared the bell, but the official did not understand him, nor was the brother aware that bells were declared contraband. In holy ignorance he had transported it home without paying duty or penalty.“ Realizing that people were pleased to donate for their oppressed fellow Christians, Prior Francis donated one to the Catholic parish at Banja Luka, where it was rung to the enjoyment of the Catholic population there without rousing Turkish opposition. However, in due time, Mariastern’s own neighbours did make trouble. Abbot Francis relates: „Though fortunate, thank God, in getting the bells into Bosnia without further ado, we did run into our share of problems with the pasha when it came to installing them.“ The prior’s account gives a vivid picture of conditions as they prevailed in the small Balkan country at that time. One day a Sapdia (policeman) handed me an Ukas (official note), summoning me to the Konak (court) … I had been reported to the pasha for importing and ringing bells … The Koran does not legislate for bells … for the Muezzin’s blood-curdling voice is supposed to substitute for the bells‘ sweet chiming. The entire council was present because no one wanted to miss the spectacle of the prior defending himself in a bell affair. The Pasha grunted at me like a bear: „How dare you install a bell on top of your house and molest everybody with its ringing?“ I: „As a landowner I have many hired men, so I need a bell to call them to work and meals, as is the custom in my home country.“ „Jok! Jok! Why does the rope of the bell lead to your prayer room?“ I: „We have our clock there, and according to our rule the one who rings the bell must stand near the clock in order to ring the bell as soon as it strikes …. “ „Jok! Jok! You also have another bell under the roof?“ I: „I do because I need two bells for, as you know, I employ two types of workers, my own servants [brothers] and Bosnian casuals. However, they do not eat or work together. Therefore, I need a separate bell for each …. “ „Jok! Jok! You can call the workers with trumpets.“ I: „I do not want to play trumpets …. „Finally, the sentence was pronounced (not recorded): „The bells must come down!? I protested vehemently, explaining the material loss I would incur if I could not ring the bells and pointing out the injustice if I, paying heavy tithe, suffered an infringement of my economic profits and rights, etc. But I could as well have saved my breath. The pasha simply insisted: „The bells must come down!“ Only the Banja Luka bell escaped the stern judgment. There the bell had been installed in the presence of the Austrian vice-consul and was therefore regarded as an imperial bell, i.e., untouchable for a Turk.

Under the leadership of Fr. Francis Pfanner, the Trappists founded the monastery of Mariastern in Bosnia in 1869, when that country had been under Turkish rule for 400 years. They suffered mainly from the neo-Muslims, original Catholics, whose conversion to Islam when that religion had first been brought to Bosnia was without parallel. Muslims lived mostly in towns and had charge of the administration. Though the new-Turks were less given to polygamy and known for their proverbial hospitality, polygamy was the rule and stately harems a common sight. Education was only for boys and of the most basic kind. The Medressen (seminaries) were the seed ground of fundamentalism, understood as the political union of all Muslims and their direct responsibility to the Caliph in Istanbul, as successor and representative of Mohammed. Any attempt at adapting the social conditions to western models was considered a criminal interference with the traditional teaching of the Koran. This then was the situation the Trappists found when they settled in Bosnia. Only trust in God and a lively faith in his vocation enabled Fr. Francis to deal with the many vexations of the system. His missionary spirit was challenged and strengthened in the process. The first part of this article on bells related how he tried to hoodwink officialdom by smuggling bells into the country and ringing them in broad daylight, thereby provoking bitter opposition. He was ready to face it. In Letters from the Vrbas River we read that the most recent restriction on bell ringing „caused much sadness, for without bells people felt poorer than on Good Friday. I felt sorry for the Catholics in our neighborhood, for some had told me that, as soon as the bell called us monks to Matins, they also got up and prayed. . .. The poor peasants had never heard the hour strike from a steeple, nor could they call a pocket watch or wall clock their own. They told time by the sun, but when they did not see the sun during the night or in the fog, snow and rain, they, like the poor souls in purgatory, did not know at all what hour of day it was.“ Biding his time for several months, the intrepid prior decided to try the bells again, this time striking them with a hammer rather than ringing them, but still bolder and louder as the days passed by. As was to be expected, he was sued again. Meanwhile he had learned how to deal with the little local despots. He tells us that the secret was „not to yield! Since no minutes were kept, one was free to construe one’s own arguments for following orders that had meanwhile been forgotten.“ In 1872 the weather came to his rescue. „Bosnia experienced a devastating drought, and Turks, [Orthodox] Greeks and Catholics held processions for rain, each religion their own. This gave me the idea to ring the bells again. Without summons I entered the Konak [ city council]. The custom was for any person of standing — count, landed gentry, official — to enter without appointment or knocking. … So, I also entered in my capacity as a landowner of considerable wealth, sat down on one of the empty chairs … and declared, ‚We have decided to help you pray for rain.“‚The Turks had come to respect the Trappists during the three years they had been in Bosnia. They thought highly not only of their prayer but also of the medical help they gave to people in the form of natural cures. Prior Francis writes: „I had already cured hundreds of sick people, including many a Turk. When I passed through the monastery to inspect the sick, inquire about their complaints and look in my books for a cure, they said, ‚Look, now the Gospodin [Lord] prays!‘ They believed that our prayers healed them. „Seeing that the Pasha was pleased at our offer, I told him and his council that we needed to ring our bells again in order to pray with more confidence and to achieve better results. They listened and put their heads together to deliberate. The verdict was, ‚You can ring the bells but only until it rains; afterwards you must stop again.‘ I thanked the Pasha and rode home. I had achieved what I wanted, regardless of whether it rained or not. If it did, it would also rain on our fields; if not, we could still continue ringing. Perhaps my brothers did not pray for the right intention, because the rains delayed for a very long time and, when they did come, we just continued ringing. Apparently, the Turks had got tired of the case and ignored us.“ He was mistaken. Mariastern’s Turkish neighbours insisted the bells be removed by the Austrian vice-consul of Banja Luka personally. The provincial governor and the Austrian consul in Sarajevo were involved in the case, and so was the Austrian ambassador, who in 1873 submitted the issue to the Sublime Porte in Constantinople. The charge was that the bells competed‘ with the Muezzin, but much more seriously, that they caused barrenness in the harems. The Trappist bells had become a national issue. For the next year Mariastern used hand bells to call its monks to prayer and the hired hands to work. However, the delay was not only due to the Founder’s illegal actions and the general strained relations, but also to changes in Sarajevo that had six governors in four years. Corruption flourished with business remaining unattended and documents getting misplaced. A bribe in the right place would have produced results, but since Prior Francis would not stoop to Turkish officialdom, nothing happened. After a year he had the bells rung again, without license. The opposition bided their time, while the prior learned endurance and perseverance: „Not to give up when life gets tough but to cling to a just cause in the sure hope that God helps those who help themselves.“

In one of his newspaper articles dating from 1877, Prior Francis paints a whimsical picture of the annual potato harvest at Mariastern. The Trappists were the first to introduce this vegetable to northern Bosnia, where it is still known as the Krummbirne (German: crooked pear). The writer begins by describing the „goose walk“ of the Trappists to the potato field: „First comes the prior. The choir monks and brothers follow according to age and, bringing up the rear, there comes the novice master. Hoods over the heads and armed with rakes, baskets and sacks, they march silently to the potato field. Accompanying us today are our Bosnian casual workers, for the most part wearing no shoes but their shirts over their pants and a leather belt around their waists. This year we are also joined by some of our Turkish guards who, bayonets strapped to their hips, have been posted at the monastery to protect us [from marauding Serbians, who from nearby caves were agitating for independence from Turkey]. All in all, we white and brown Trappists, Bosnians and soldiers must present a very rare spectacle. „When an occasion warrants it, I have made it my habit to address a few words to the brothers. This time I take one of the soldiers working alongside us as an example. ‚Take a look at this guard,‘ I say. ‚He has been picking potatoes with us since early morning. As you can see, he does not mind to bend down, but you will not see him kneel. Why? It is because of his pants because, if they get soiled, he cannot buy himself another pair. Since early morning he has been fasting, nor will he eat anything before nightfall, intent only on keeping his fast. He also denies himself all other pleasures, does not eat nor drink, smoke nor snuff, until sunset. Thus, he works all day long on an empty stomach, hoping only for a few cents extra pay. But what does he eat when the work is done? Certainly, no meat! If he can get himself a few beans, onions, cabbage leaves and perhaps a loaf of maize bread, he is more than content. As you can see, he also does his own cooking, making do with an earthenware pot in lieu of a stove to cook whatever is available. If the embers of last night’s fire are still glowing, he buries his maize dough in the glow and covers it with ashes. Then he sits down by the fire, crosses his legs and waits for his bread to cook. This hour the Turk loves best- smoking his pipe and drinking black coffee by the faint light of the embers. Once he has had his beans and bread, he will go without food for another day and continue working without complaint. “ ‚The life of our Turkish guard speaks of service. He will go through thick and thin, even fire, but not complain. It’s been three years now that our guards received their last wages, and who hears them rebel? … When I asked one of them whether he was still willing to go on serving, he simply replied, „Of course.“ „‚Prior Francis had an important lesson to teach. He continued: „As you know, our Turkish guard is also our postman, the fastest and most reliable. There has been no incidence of neglect of duty in two years. The other day when I had the post ready to take to Banja Luka, it so happened that it was time for him to eat after a day’s fast. All the other guards were already straining to hear the cannon shots in town, the sign for them to go for their steaming bean pots. Just that moment I came along with the postbag. ‚Haide, posta ide!‘ – Up, the post is leaving! Immediately our postman jumped to his feet. ‚Evo mi!‘ – Here I am, send me! And as if that were not enough sacrifice, it had also started raining cats and dogs! But without the slightest hesitation he took the bag and ran to town – carbine, stiletto and all – to return two hours later, dripping wet. Only then he sat down to his bowl of cold beans, ate them with relish and was happy to have earned an extra penny.“ What lessons could the monks learn from their Turkish guard? Prior Francis was quick to point out two. „The guard works and protects us to earn a dish of the plainest food and a few coins. We on our part work and undergo troubles to gain heaven which 1. s assured us if we have served our Lord faithfully. He fasts every day for a month for the sake of religion; should we not keep our religious fast with a conviction at least as strong as his?“ Another time Prior Francis brought the poor tattered child of one of the workmen into the monastery courtyard to show the brothers how deprived the Bosnian people were and to elicit their sympathy. A novice immediately ran to bring out a clean shirt, while the prior himself fed the child before sending him back to his parents. After that he had no more need to convince his community about the need for an orphanage. For the newspaper he added: „I wish we had the strength and means to gather together as many of these children as possible in order to keep them from hunger and, above all, from Islam and the vices to which Christians fall prey! To bring up an orphan costs forty-fifty francs a year for bed, board and clothing. The boys also learn to read, write and do sums, besides being instructed in Religion and one or more trades. Once a fellow has absorbed all this he may be considered brought up and self-reliant.“ Trappist mission under Prior Francis! His monks were to strive not only for personal perfection, but by their leader’s express wish also for the salvation of immortal souls redeemed by the Precious Blood of Christ.

Abbot Francis had a lifelong devotion to St. Joseph. The foster father of Jesus was his protector, treasurer and guide in the spiritual life. He relates several incidents when he and his monks received help by praying to St. Joseph. The following is an excerpt from his reminiscences of Mariastern, Bosnia (1869-1880): One Sunday evening in Advent our covered wagon was going to Alt-Gradiska with three brothers on board. They had to take the bridge over the seething Vrbas River. Some hours after they had left and the monastery bell was just about to ring for night rest, one of the brothers who had been watching the bridge from a window came rushing towards my cell with an ear-rending shriek. It was the time of the great night silence, so he gesticulated to me to follow him to the window. I spied a light floating down the river and immediately knew what was happening. Our bridge was only a primitive float of planks strapped across two boats that were roped together and to each bank. The ropes had snapped, setting the brothers adrift down the raging river. My heart sank as I sent them my absolution. Then I cried as loud as I could: „Run! Anyone who can! Save our drowning brothers!“ We had already experienced a similar accident, when our bridge had been shattered on the cliffs with Fr. Gallus trapped on a mill weir and killed. The Vrbas had many submerged cliffs, the closest only ten miles away; these cliffs and the rocks, rising steep above the water, as well as countless weirs and sandbanks made travel by boat a fatal undertaking. But it was our only connection with the outside world. The three brothers, indispensable all of them, hardly stood a chance; unless a miracle occurred, they would be buried in the angry waters. As several brothers ran out with lanterns, rakes and ropes, sleet began to fall from the pitch-dark sky. After a while there was only silence, as I wearily watched the lamp on the river disappear. In utter despair I said to my brothers, „Let us commend them to St. Joseph; there is nothing more we can do.“ In chapel each one prayed from his heart for about an hour. Then we retired. I still listened into the night, but as everything remained silent, I also went to sleep from sheer exhaustion. At midnight the bell rang. From my window I could hear the rescue team: „They are alive! Afloat on the river!“What relief! Old Jacob, hearing the news that his son Joseph was alive in Egypt, could not have been happier than I. The brothers quickly put a raft together and in thick darkness drove the 90 minutes back to the scene of the accident to haul their shipwrecked fellows back to safety. At the monastery we offered up our two o’clock Matins and the Holy Masses at daybreak for their success. We remained without news until noon. The wait was ago nizing. Though there was really not much hope, I had a room heated and warm blankets and drinks prepared, just in case. Finally, at 2:00 p.m. two of the shipwrecked brothers returned. No, they did not want anything to eat or drink, not even a warm bed, but had only one wish – to give me their story. They said that the ferry had hardly reached mid-river, when the steel ropes snapped and set them afloat. They had quickly untied the horses so as to cling to their tails when they were going to be thrown overboard. But the youngest had offered to swim ashore and was waiting for the ferry to pass the bank at close range. Then he had thrown himself – boots, habit and all – into the water and swum for the bank. They had heard him splashabout but could not tell if he had managed to get a foothold. At that moment the wind had blown out their lantern and torn at the railing until it had sunk. Meanwhile they stood astride the ferry as it crashed over cliffs, sandbanks and floating islands, fearing to be shattered to pieces any minute. But suddenly a change had occurred. „The boats got caught and we came to an abrupt halt. The horses jumped off and we decided to bed down in the hay with the snow for cover. Only much later did we hear voices from the riverbank. We burnt a little hay to make light and could see our rescuers! But it was too risky to haul us ashore, because the pull could jerk our ferry out of its jam and set us afloat again. So the brothers fetched a boat from further down the river and so brought us ashore.“ Deo Gratias! In the evening the younger brother also arrived, hungry and cold, and still in the habit he had worn jumping into the river. His tale was one of heroism. After he had climbed on top of the bank, he had run across the fields to the highway, caught up with some wagoner and pulled the reins out of his hands. Then he had driven those horses in a mad gallop to the next bridge, expecting to stop the ill-fated ferry there. But when he could not see it, he had decided to return along the opposite bank, disappointed and hopeless. We discovered that the bridge had swept headlong on to a weir where the boats had got stuck. Except for the broken railing, the ferry was intact. After one week we had it dislodged and fixed in its proper place. It occurred to us that this had not been just one miracle but a whole string of miracles. I published the story in honor of St. Joseph. God, through the intercession of this powerful saint, continued watching over Mariastern with special care, otherwise we would have perished there many times. Our praise and thanks to St. Joseph!

Our LEAVES magazine bears a name with a very long and interesting history in the annals of Mariannhill. Abbot Francis was not only a charismatic speaker but also a versatile writer. He had recognized the power of the pen already in Bosnia, where he maintained a growing correspondence with benefactors and friends and wrote promotional articles for various newspapers. But because such writing was time-consuming, he begged Uncle Ludwig, printer and well-known benefactor in Germany, for a used hand press. In a letter of February 1880 he disclosed his plans: „We have a small printing press at Mariastern. As soon as we get the license, we will begin issuing monthly FLYING LEAVES to our kind supporters free of charge.“ The name of the bulletin was Prior Francis‘ own brainchild, but the publications did not see the light of day. In his Memoirs he explains: „Certain influential Croat gentlemen in the provincial government did not want the double eagle which adorned its title page and which was framed by the motto of the noble Emperor Franz Joseph [benefactor of Mariastern], Vzribus Unitis [With Combined Effort], to take to the air.“ Jealousy of the flourishing monastery, and the fact that both emblem and inscription offended the Croats who were seeking independence from the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, thwarted the publication of FLYING LEAVES OF MARIASTERN. The Prier’s application for a license was vetoed. But he did not give up. Setting his eyes on the missions, Prior Francis saw the need for a regular bulletin even more keenly. In the same February letter quoted earlier and written in the midst of preparations for Africa, he told a German gentleman, agent to Bishop Ricards of Grahamstown in Eastern Cape, to prevail on His Lordship to buy a hand press in London: I consider this acquisition necessary, if we don’t want to be forgotten at the Cape, for nothing is truer than „Out of sight, out of mind.“ While His Lordship keeps up the interest in our work in England and Ireland, I wish to do so in Austria and Germany. I can do very little by correspondence. I wish to circulate several of my letters and write firsthand reports about the country and people, and this little hand press would help me. My idea is to publish a few pages of light reading and interesting reports twice a month. We could add a few photos made by our brother and this would keep alive the interest at home, so necessary to obtain novices. If the novices don’t come from Europe … we are lost. But … how can novices want to go to the Cape, if they do not hear anything about it? I have abundant experience, believe me! The little press would also serve to print pamphlets as well as smaller books for our Order, because to ship these from Europe would cost much freight and duty. I hope His Lordship will not object to this additional expense and approve of it; it is also in His Lordship’s interest if Austria and Germany take a warm interest [in his foundation of Dunbrody], particularly as this kind of publicity work will be necessary for many years to come. Five months later Prior Francis and a band of Trappists set out for Africa. The bishop had turned down his request as too expensive, but the Prior was not defeated. He took the used hand press (preserved to this day) with him and also a printer who had trained with Don Bosco in Turin. The FLYING LEAVES were to be given new life in Africa. The noble double eagle went with the traveling Trappists to the Cape of Good Hope, from there to go on a return flight to the friendly and blessed regions of the Rhine and Danube to greet our dear friends and by chance offer a „Good Day!‘ or „No Offense!“ to the one or other Croat. Prior Francis expressed regrets about the plain exterior of the paper, four pages folio format: „We did not have the means to give our FLYING LEAVES OF MARIA DUNBRODY a more appealing look, its poor garb already costing us dearly.“ But proudly he explained the remaining symbols on its cover: „The small crosses with stars on either side were originally meant to symbolize ‚Mariastern‘ [Maria Star], but when that name no longer applied … we did not wish to remove the sign which simply represents the faith and hope of a Catholic Christian, showing everyone at first sight what spirit we are born of: In Cruce Salus [Salvation is in the Cross].“ The first number of the Dunbrody LEAVES is dated Sunday, 15 December 1880, just four months after the Trappist arrival on the edge of the Little Karoo. The paper’s mission was: „To reduce the volume of correspondence with the friends and benefactors of ‚Mariastern‘ and ‚Maria Dunbrody,‘ … to serve as a news bulletin for a wider readership, to inform readers about the mission country South Africa and win new friends for the Trappist mission.“ Notwithstanding Dunbrody’s slow and painful development, the Prior kept up his faith in LEAVES: „Wherever the need is greatest, help is closest. We will probably have nothing much left to laugh about, but that will not rob us of our trust in God; on the contrary, that trust is steadily growing stronger.“ If some readers were upset by the Prior’s frank reports about conditions at Dunbrody, others loved LEAVES because of them and for its vivid descriptions. Never denying his own humble background, Fr. Francis wrote in a style ordinary people appreciated. His descriptions of hitherto unknown places captured the imagination of young and old. On 15 January 1881 a second issue of LEAVES flew across the Atlantic, and after that three more, until the Trappists transferred to Natal. As FLYING LEAVES FROM MARIANNHILL, the paper continued for another year, but in 1885 it could no longer contain all the news the then-Abbot Francis wanted to share, and it was merged with a monthly magazine.

Watch a tree during a windstorm. See how it sways, its crown shaking, its limbs aching. Leaves are flying everywhere. Branches – big ones, too – break and come flying through the air. Telephone and utility poles fall, and live electrical wires crackle and snap on the sidewalk. Hissing angrily, the wind tears and heaves away at the tree and you expect it to crash any minute through your car roof or housetop. If felled, its roots would tear up your pavement. You watch and tremble at nature’s raw force. But, O wonder! The storm subsides and the tree stands straight. It shows the scars of battle, but it stands – silent and erect. What strength there is in such a tree! Psalm One compares a just man to „a tree planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due season, whose leaves never fade.“ Men and women of this caliber are also knocked about; they bear the scars of battle, but they keep their stand. Francis Pfanner was one of them. What battles did he not fight, what storms did he not weather! He was often bent by the weight of responsibility and the onslaught of opposition, but he did not break or get uprooted. Advice originally by Francis de Sales, which he gave to others, sounds like his own life’s motto: „Happy are the pliable hearts for they will never break.“ Being firmly rooted in his vocation as a Trappist and missionary allowed him not only to endure opposition but also to welcome it: „By just nodding one’s head, one does not achieve much and certainly not clarity of purpose.“ And in a similar vein: „The more forceful the arguments, the clearer the issue.“ Francis Pfanner did not think along purely human lines. God was always involved and, because God was, he could be daring to the point of recklessness. He said, „Reluctance to dare something betrays little trust in God.“ Just like the tree buffeted about in the storm but standing its ground, Fr. Francis was unyielding in difficulties. This fortitude came from a clear conscience and living an upright life. At one time he had his papers examined by a border police when the officer was called away. He looked suspiciously at the monk: Would he escape? Fr. Francis assured him that he would still be there when he returned. He was not an escapist: „It was never my habit to run away.“ But he needed greater courage than that. Hardly finished with his novitiate, he fell from grace with his Prior for preaching more than was the custom and insisting on stricter observance of the rule. Someone less rooted would have left the order, but not Francis Pfanner. Even when some time later his highest superior suggested that he had better return to parish ministry, he did not waver in his vocation. On account of his outright manner and unaccustomed interpretation of the rule, the monk Francis was a thorn in the side for most of his superiors. Their rejection of his personality was perhaps his biggest cross, but he bore it heroically. „One enters religious life for God’s sake, not to please people.“ And: „I never look left or right and certainly not behind, but always straight ahead.“ His founding activities brought him in close contact with various church authorities. While they admired him for his initiative and great love of souls, they did not readily support his requests or projects. He was made to wait endlessly, and his proposals were not taken seriously. He was accused of insubordination by two bishops and several abbots, and every time he lost the case. However, despite undeserved treatment and flagrant injustice, he remained loyal to the Church, bowing to its judgment: „The initiative must be taken by Rome, like all great things in the Catholic Church.“ Like the tree in the Psalm, Francis Pfanner was „planted by running water and his leaves never faded.“ His roots reached deep, right into the Heart of Christ. His wellspring was an insatiable thirst for God’s will to be done in his life and for the Gospel to be spread far and wide. Of this thirst Pope Benedict XVI said in his Lenten message for 2007: „In all truth, only the love that unites the free gift of oneself with the impassioned desire for reciprocity instills a joy which eases the heaviest of burdens …. We need to respond to such love and devote ourselves to communicating it to others. Christ ‚draws me to himself‘ in order to unite himself to me, so that I learn to love the brothers with his own love.“ A strong tree can survive winter. In the bleak time of the year when nothing speaks of life, the roots guard and nourish the hope of spring. But they have to be very deep and firmly embedded. From what roots did Francis Pfanner draw his strength? We can tell from his guiding principles. One has to do with spiritual equilibrium: „‚Not a single hair falls from our head without God’s knowledge“ – at this thought one does not easily lose one’s balance.“ Ecology tells us that a tree grows in close interaction with its root bed and environment. Abbot Francis recognized the need of a similar relationship between the human being and his Maker. „We must not watch idly nor run away from difficulties. God helps us always but many times not without our co-operation. We may hardly expect from God what we can do ourselves.“ And: „Nothing is more foolish than to despair.“ Rather: „One must wind himself up again and again like a clock and try not to lose his balance.“ Towards the end of his life he was more and more configured to Christ: „All for you, fairest Lord Jesus. Elf a person offers himself completely to God, giving Him what is dearest to him, God gives Himself completely in return.“

Abbot Francis had a charism for winning people of every walk of life, women as well as men, to dedicate their lives to spreading the Gospel. He himself had heard Christ’s appeal: „I have come to cast fire on the earth … “ (Lk. 12:49), and from that time onward he was burning to serve Him. Thanks to his many writings on the subject of vocations, we know how he was able to staff his two foundations, Mariastern and Mariannhill, the largest monasteries of his Order. He also appealed to women. In Bosnia and Natal he established a total of four sisters‘ congregations, the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood being his very own foundation. His promotional letters, sermons and periodic articles testify to a man obsessed with Christ. In this he resembled his Cistercian founder, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, on whose feast he published a promotional brochure, Are you a Chimney Sweep? 1874). Writing such as this had never come out of a religious house before and certainly not from a Trappist. Prior Francis writes from practice and for practice not only of religious observance, but also, and foremost, of the two main commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. His style is engrossing and witty, even caustic when he castigates people whom he considers the heretics of his day – Kulturkämpfer (those promoting the culture struggle), freemasons and people with a bent too liberal for his liking. The Chimney Sweep went through several editions and was read by high and low alike, including Count Andrassy, the famous Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, who exclaimed: „That scoundrel! I must meet him!“ Despite his weak lungs and frequent malarial attacks, not to mention his many cares and the rejection he endured at the hands of his own Trappist superiors, Prior Francis not only did not give up his own vocation, but he also won many new members for his Order. His letter of February 1877 is a good example of how he approached potential candidates. He had recuperated at a Tyrol health resort and found warm hospitality there. Afterwards he wrote an open letter to the Tiroler Volksblatt (The Tyrol People’s Paper) a frank appeal for vocations. He related that he had not returned to Mariastern alone. „I took with me two postulants from Brixen, but the three from southern Tyrol…did not report…. However, ten more candidates were waiting for me in Agram [Croatia], and so I returned with twelve men …. They are all still holding out.“ He then asks the editor to „inform all those who would like to follow the twelve that their boat departs the river port every Thursday and that, if they announce their arrival ahead of time, Mariastern will send a carriage to Alt-Gradiska to meet them.“ It seems that some candidates hesitated on account of the guerrilla warfare just then being waged in Bosnia by Serbian insurgents. But Prior Francis put them at ease because the terrorists had their hideouts at a safe distance from Mariastern. In particular he wants jobless journeymen to „take heart and come to us. We have work for all of you and our wages are much better than what you usually get, because they will be paid in incorruptible currency and the paymaster is the One who said, ‚Whatever you have done to the least of my brothers you have done it to me.“‚ He was disappointed that „the Tyrolians and Vorarlbergers have not taken my bait. Why don’t they? Do my own countrymen not wish to distinguish themselves as pioneers of the genuine culture Trappists spread? Or do brave souls only show spirit in the safety of their mountains? Become homesick for their mountains? Let me tell you: The mountains of Bosnia far exceed the beauty and grandeur of any you know.“ Using an image from marksmanship, he wrote: „I hope I have been a good shot and hit at least a few rings. Or did I miss my target altogether? Vedremo – we shall see!“ The founder used earthy language sprung fresh from Vorarlberg soil. A style chosen and polished was foreign to him. His approach was reminiscent of the legendary Abraham of Santa Clara (1644-1709), who so effectively held up a mirror to the society of his time. In 1881 Prior Francis published The Trappist in South Africa, an account of Trappist life and work in the missions. But not content with writing, he decided to meet people personally. Though suffering severely from seasickness, this Drummer of God (A.L. Balling, CMM) could not be deterred from traveling to Europe several times. Speaking from the pulpits of 19th century Germany and Austria, he fascinated his listeners. Though his message was unusual and the life at a Trappist monastery in uncongenial surroundings was not enticing, young men were touched by the love of God and immortal souls he spoke about. Life in Turkish Bosnia demanded sacrifice, but the South African missions, where evangelization was only just beginning, called for high courage and generosity from men and women alike. But the vision of an austere monk’s life set them on fire. Abbot Francis made a rich catch every time, yet the numbers he took back seemed never enough to fill the growing needs of Mariannhill’s missions. In an 1888 article he addressed a fictitious Council of Europe thus: „If you say, ‚We are unable to relate to the people of Africa,‘ and excuse yourselves from helping me, it leaves me with sisters only. Of sisters I have enough, for anytime I call, ten times more respond. They are willing to go wherever I send them. But where are the men? Did not the Kulturkampf also produce the kind of men that are now needed?“ It was by urging the people in the markets of Catholic Europe to enter the Lord’s vineyard that Mariannhill was able to lay the foundation of systematic evangelization among the local people of South Africa.

Just as the woman Mary took a major part in the redemptive work of her Son, so the sisters share in the work of evangelization. We men cannot manage it alone – Francis Pfanner. From a spirit of deep faith and zeal for the spreading of God’s Kingdom on earth, the Trappist Francis Pfanner established the Mercy Sisters (1874) and the Sisters Adorers of the Most Precious Blood of Saint Maria de Mattias (1879) in Banja Luka, Bosnia, and the Holy Cross Sisters of Menzingen, Switzerland (1883), in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. He would have also called the Franciscan Sisters of Kaufbeuren, Germany, to South Africa (1883), had his plans not been frustrated. Lastly, he founded the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood (1885), whom he fondly called his „Red Sisters.“ It was the founder’s charism (special gift) to set up something new in the world by practically stamping centers of prayer and evangelization out of the ground, leaving the consolidation of these foundations to those who possessed neither the skill nor the courage for totally new beginnings. The Mercy Sisters and Adorers provided schools for the children of the poor and an orphanage for homeless children. As always, when it was a matter of gaining territory and souls for Christ, he acted as „quick as lightning.“ He wrote, „Six weeks ago the little makeshift convent did not exist at all … birds were still chirping on the oak trees from which our brothers cut the wood for the roof tiles. Six weeks ago … twenty sisters (expelled from Baden during the Kulturkampf) have moved in to open a girls“ boarding school and orphanage. A permanent convent will be built for them when spring is around, provided money comes in from I don’t know where. So here is an opportunity for valiant girls, brave singles and God-fearing ladies to sacrifice themselves for Bosnia. Needed are teachers and women skilled in domestic work.“ In old age the founder congratulated himself on his accomplishment. „Within six years three different religious communities had been planted. So much good can come out of a single idea when it is taken up and promptly acted upon. Thus when Brother Zachariah first suggested that we build a Trappist monastery in Austria [the dual monarchy Austria-Hungary], I took up the idea, and with the support of hundreds of people, this ’seed fell on good ground,‘ grew and cast its branches all the way to Africa [ a band of Trappists left Bosnia for South Africa under his leadership] where it still grows luxuriantly. All honor and praise to God, because he has turned everything to good account and obviously willed it thus, otherwise it would not have come about. Although the former bishop of Bosnia accused me in Rome as being a perpetuum mobile quad nunquam habet requies [someone always in motion and never at rest], the present bishop of Banja Luka will not feel uncomfortable residing among three religious communities.“ The need for women religious was even greater in Africa than in Bosnia. But it was not easy for 19th century women to leave family and homeland for an unknown continent. While many women emigrated to the Americas and Australia, Africa was for most people the Dark Continent, synonymous with extreme hardship and death. Ignorance, fear and superstition kept ordinary people away. It was only the daring and mission-driven men and women willing to serve a goal higher than unaided human nature would normally attain who followed a call to Africa and stayed there. When Prior Francis needed sisters in Mariannhill, he seems to have first approached the Adorers, but they declined. Moreover, the bishop of Natal had promised his French nuns that he would not introduce other sisters into his vicariate. Thus the founder (consecrated abbot in December 1885) had to devise another strategy. Again „quick as lightning,“ he advertised for women volunteers to come and help the Trappists with the education of local African girls. Five German women responded, and with them he laid the foundation of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood in September 1885. Their purpose was „to introduce girls and women to Christian faith and culture by instructing them in domestic and agricultural skills, besides giving them formal education and catechism classes. They were to look upon their work as their normal penance and means of self-sanctification.“ Abbot Francis wrote that „after some time the bishop assured himself of the religious spirit and discipline of Mariannhill’s helpers, and when he saw how successfully they worked among the local people, he willingly granted their request to form a religious community. He had no further worries because our monastery took care of all the spiritual and temporal needs of its sisters.“ Abbot Francis was an eminently practical man. Endowed with deep faith and an indomitable, even audacious, trust in God, yet he did not forget that grace builds on nature. To a friend he wrote, „The preference for anything practical, which I owe to my father, has helped me in all situations. I was able to tell every brother and priest, „This is the way it’s done.“ And it also helped me with getting my sisters established.“ The founder had high aims for his sisters. They were to dedicate themselves exclusively to the missions, not only alongside the Trappists but also worldwide. In his letters he mentions Australia as a place where they are needed, but with even greater emphasis he speaks of Korea and Japan. He wanted to send them to Turkey and Russia, to Sudan and Tierra del Fuego in the extreme south of Argentina. Little could he guess that from the one seed he had planted there came a rich harvest of seven African daughter congregations, all formed by his „Red Sisters.“ Moreover, what is often overlooked is the fact that Mariannhill owes its own existence to a sister. It was the Augustinian nun Silesia who persuaded Bishop Jolivet to accept the Trappists into his vicariate, when he had already decided against them.

„Many will understand the Church on account of her works; a Church that serves has a face that speaks to people.“ Cardinal Miroslav Vlk knows. As a young priest in Communist Czechoslovakia, he earned his living by cleaning windows and later as archivist for a bank. Abbot Francis was convinced that one way of serving Christ was by honest work. „God’s grace is not for the idle.“ All his foundations were built on the Benedictine motto Ora et Labora (Pray and Work), with the labora at times given priority, at least until a foundation was complete. It was the work performed by the Trappists in Bosnia and Natal that caught people’s attention and disposed them favorably towards the Catholic faith. The witness of work well done paved the way to people’s hearts and ultimately for the Gospel. One reporter singled out the fact that the Trappists worked with their own hands but in a manner that „occupied them spiritually, not only physically.“ The observation captures the founder’s basic approach to manual labor: „It must be done for the greater honor and glory of God; while the hand wields the axe, the heart is with God.“ Another commentator mused over the effect the Trappist engagement will have, „[ …] the spectacle of unselfish, industrial and self-reliant activity afforded by this monastic fraternity furnishes an example of what can be done by one’s own effort. The influence of these monks upon our local people cannot be otherwise than beneficial.“ In January 1884, 13 months after Mariannhill’s foundation, the monks had all monastic buildings, numerous workshops, a guesthouse, stores and offices, and a four-roomed schoolhouse in place. A hundred acres of land had been cultivated, 10,000 pineapples planted, a large vegetable garden laid out, and several roadways and two imposing stone bridges constructed. One paper told its readers that the Trappists were proceeding in the best Benedictine tradition by making the most economic use of the means at their disposal, including their manpower. Thus they had created an impoundment to enable them to install a turbine for powering a whole array of machinery. „They want to grind their own mealies [maize] and invite the local people also to grind theirs instead of rubbing it between two stones. They want to make their own clothes and shoes from overseas materials and thus afford naked people a blanket at areas on able price. Finally, they will also make oil from the groundnuts [peanuts] that do so well and teach others how to press them as well.“ The Natal government recognized the fact that the hard-working monks were actually making a tremendous contribution to the common good and granted them unconditional passage at £5 per member. Their self-reliance saved the colony thousands of pounds in foreign currency, while their laborsaving devices and new methods in agriculture, such as producing manure from surplus grass rather than burning it, were something farmers could imitate. The man who inspired a11 these activities that made Mariastern and Mariannhill into beacons of faith and civilization was Francis Pfanner. Without his vision and practical endowments either monastery would have taken a very different course. He owed his outlook on work, next to St. Benedict, to his Vorarlberg upbringing, especially the hands-on training from his father, whom he once described as a workaholic. “ [ … ] I was never a book man but always a practical one. Among all the subjects at school I liked only Mathematics. Sports were more important than studies …. This preference for the practical, which I owe to my father, has helped me in all situations.“ And: „It is a good thing to learn something when one is young, for in certain situations neither ‚Cicero‘ nor ‚Philothea‘ offers a solution, but only practical know-how [does].“ His preference for manual work did not go unnoticed in the monastery. He tells us that precisely on account of his skill and physical strength he was assigned to roadwork and cutting trees rather than domestic chores, such as cleaning the house or doing the dishes. Work in the open agreed with him. In his first letter home he wrote, „The harder I work and perspire, the better I feel. It stands me in good stead that I learned from father … to work with soil and wood.“ Road building and splitting firewood became his hobbies. If there was anything amiss with this, it was that he expected the same eagerness for manual work from others. His fellow monks soon got a taste of his regimen. „Before I led my men to work … I told them that I hoped they would walk faster to the place of work and show a more lively interest.“ Whenever time allowed, the founder continued to work alongside his monks, even as prior and abbot. Visitors to Mariastern „did not trust their eyes when they found their ‚gospodin‘ [lord/master] working at the laundry tub with rolled-up sleeves or on the road with pickaxe and hoe.“ Manual work is also essential to the rule and purpose Abbot Francis gave to his Red Sisters. Like all missionaries, they should spread the faith, but do it intelligently and „practically,“ helping people to serve God with heart and hands. He took great pride in his sisters. „There has never been an order that works in the fields and teaches others. This was a big gap among the many Catholic orders, because manual work will civilize our African people more quickly and surely than academic schooling alone.“ Abbot Francis was convinced about the witness value of work well done. Confirmation came early and from one no less than the pasha of Banja Luka, who asked him: „What good will all this be to you when you die?“ The founder returned his question, „Let me ask you what good your own life of ease and pleasure will be to you when your hour of death comes? We give the fruits of our labor to the poor and die at peace with God, not wishing for more.“

The Founder of Mariannhill did not enjoy the robust health his countless activities seem to suggest.  In the seminary Wendelin contracted pneumonia and meningitis (1848).  “For several days I was unconscious and close to death.”  He had to repeat the year.  After his recovery he felt a strong desire for the missions.  His bishop, however – in view of his weak constitution – appointed him to the parish of Haselstauden in his native Vorarlberg.  There the young curate gave himself heart and soul to his ministry, but soon he developed a suspicious cough.  “Disposition to TB” was the diagnosis.  Thus from 1851 on he tried to recover his strength several months each year in different spas.  The sickness was arrested but, “my lungs remained very weak and I often suffered from colds and a hoarse throat.” Nothing could slow down the fervent pastor.  Not content with caring for his own flock, he also assisted with outside parish missions.  “Hearing confession from 3 am to 7 pm every day for two weeks, I contracted my first hernia and a second one as a novice.  These two companions followed me faithfully…and spared me the penitential belt.  On account of my poor health I even bought myself a burial place at Haselstauden.” After nine years Fr. Pfanner was appointed confessor to sisters in Croatia (1859-63).  “I was ill several times; once I was on the point of death.”  In a letter to his family (1862) he mentioned smallpox and attributed his recovery to the fervent prayers the sisters offered to St. Joseph. The following spring, on a trip to the Holy Land and Egypt, he suffered from severe dysentery at Suez.  “For several days I was bedridden at a hotel.  They cured me with unsalted rice water, a medicine I later used for patients with running stomachs, diarrhea, and similar ailments.” After thirteen years in the diocesan ministry his lungs and stomach had not improved.  “My doctor said I had only two more years to live.  So I began to think seriously about my death, and I decided to prepare for it by prayer and penance.”  He entered a Trappist monastery and was given manual work in the open air.  The effect of this was that he developed a gargantuan appetite.  He not only made short work of piles of firewood, but also of the biggest loaf of bread, unconcerned about what he ate as long as it was plenty.  “After a midday meal I never knew what had been in the two bowls which I emptied to the dregs each time.”  To his family he wrote (1864): “Thank God, I am healthy and strong…My cheeks are fat and, though I don’t have a mirror to see them, I feel it.  Also my hands are too large to clasp now…The harder I work and perspire, the better I feel.”   Later: “I discarded the cat’s pelt I had worn on my stomach and belly against colic and cramps for almost ten years.”  After two months Fr. Francis, as he was called now, felt rejuvenated.  “The lazy flesh and sluggish blood were cauterized more effectively with hard outdoor labor, a vegetarian diet, profuse perspiration, and hunger than with lunar caustic” [silver nitrate]. However, the monk’s health seriously declined four years later in the mosquito-ridden Roman campagna. While he and his companions were restoring an ancient Cistercian monastery, Tre Fontane, on the outskirts of the Holy City for the 1800^th centenary of St. Paul’s death – St. Paul being believed to have been beheaded in Tre Fontane – he contracted malaria.  One brother died within a matter of weeks, the others carried the bacillus with them to Croatia, where the Church sent them to establish a new monastery (1869).  “For the next seven months I felt like running away and for three months like dying…Two of three days I was confined to bed with bouts of fever…I knew enough to realize that quinine was poisonous, and to swallow poison made no sense to me. Therefore, I took no medicine at all but continued with my sweating cures.” Malaria was to be Fr. Francis’s lifelong companion.  Though most debilitating, it did, however, not keep him from successively making three new foundations, one in Bosnia and two in South Africa.  St. Paul’s word took on personal meaning for him: “God has chosen what is considered weak in order to destroy what the world thinks important” (1Cor 1:27). In 1875 TB flared up again, this time aggravated by spasmodic attacks of rheumatism and malaria.  “I suffered from fever many times.”  In 1877 he was prevented from attending the general chapter for health reasons, but in 1879 he volunteered to follow a missionary call to Africa.  Before departing, he came down with typhoid, and people thought he was dead.  Barely recovered, he went on a promotional tour during which he developed oedema in his feet.  He joked, “I was confined to bed to preserve my strength for Africa.” Dunbrody (1880-82) was not viable.  Prior Francis had to go begging again, in the pink of health it seems.  “I traveled for twelve hours…in barbaric cold.  The following morning at six I stood in the pulpit, then resumed travel in an open carriage, and addressed another audience in the evening.” For several years his health seems to have been stable.  In 1882 he founded Mariannhill.  However, in 1888 he was diagnosed with stomach cancer.  For several months his life hung in the balance, his recovery being gained only when a novena of prayers was offered to the Sacred Heart on his behalf.  At age 67 (1892) he was removed from office and he retired to Emaus.  There he worked like a young man for another ten years and began to age only when his eyes failed and his veins hardened.  It was this calcification of the arteries that finally put an end to his life on 24 May, 1909, at age 84.

In the first article on this topic, published in the previous issue of LEAVES, we considered Abbot Francis’s health record. Among other challenges, he had to struggle with malaria all his life. In this article we turn to two other issues connected with his health. They show us a man who was perhaps greatest in suffering. Health Provider in Bosnia Prior Francis discovered his skill for treating common sicknesses. „Already after three years people called me Vleleik hedschim (great doctor). My reputation had spread far across the borders, the sick being brought in on carts and sleighs from distant Dalmatia, Herzegovina, even Croatia …. When I traveled through Bosnia, they carried the sick and handicapped to the roads; therefore, I always had my homeopathic health kit with me.“ Prior Francis followed the method of the famous Bavarian hydrotherapist, Fr. Sebastian Kneipp, and assisted by one of his monks, cured hundreds of people. „They had much respect for our prayer. When I came through the monastery gates to examine the sick and they saw me paging through my books, they said, ‚Look, now he prays.“‚ The monastery entrance was filled with patients the whole day, and the bridge over the lJrbas River could hardly support the carriages. Therefore, Prior Francis had a small clinic built, complete with air, sun, and water bathing facilities. Like Kneipp, he did not discriminate among people. His patients included war invalids and upper-class Turks. His attitude towards all who came was: „What are you, if not human beings, all of you!“ One day he was even asked to attend to the Pasha’s favorite wife in his harem. To those who criticized him, he replied, „Must one not help if one is able to?“ His favorite reply to people who thought that he was almighty was, „God willing, I will heal you.“ Seasickness From his youth Wendelin Pfanner loved to travel, little suspecting that he would make his more important journeys by sea, and as a monk at that! His stomach condition may have aggravated the seasickness he suffered each time. In March 1863 on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he was so sick after leaving Trieste that he took only supper the first evening and nothing anymore thereafter. „I cannot remember how I got to Corfu except that I was terribly sick …. I was annoyed at my miserable state, for never would I have believed that I could get seasick. I also had good reason for my confidence. I had felt nothing when sailing the previous year from Genoa to Civitavecchia, from Rome to Naples and back, and from Trieste to Venice. Secondly, I never got dizzy but was able to climb steeples and high scaffoldings. I had fearlessly climbed Vesuvius and the most precipitous peaks in the Tyrol and Switzerland. However, I had not considered that the dizziness at sea is quite different and forces travelers to surrender.“ He left us a vivid account of his return trip via Egypt. Instead of landing at Alexandria in 28 hours, the boat became a plaything for the towering waves, going anywhere and nowhere. „Since travelling by sea was such a torture and I was never free from seasickness even for a minute, you may believe that I renewed my most solemn resolution a hundred times over: never to dare to entrust myself to the sea again for the rest of my life. But what use are the plans man makes when God has planned differently for him? When seventeen years later I resolved to go to Africa, I saw no sea anymore between Europe and the Cape of Good Hope; I only saw the promontory and the good hope.“ As Fr. Francis, he sailed again to Rome in December 1867. Between Trieste and Ancona he became so seasick that he could only say two Masses on Christmas, whereas on a ferry in the English Channel, Christmas 1875, he could not even do that much: „I resigned myself to my fate, regretting only that this night … with the angels singing … I could only produce some miserable sounds from 8 pm to 2 am. I lay awake all night but could not think of anything else in this storm than how wretched man was and how majestic God.“ Of his first trip to South Africa traveling third class on a mail steamer, we have an interesting account from his pen. He describes his seasickness that lasted the entire four weeks of the voyage. „I am lying … like Saint Alexi us, on an assortment of crates under the staircase of the dining room. The sharply seasoned salad that they gave me to calm my stomach has only caused it to revolt harder. Now a not so harmless inflammation of the stomach lining is spreading to the mucous membranes of my esophagus and mouth.“ When the temperatures dropped near the Cape, the brothers brought him down into the lower quarters. „I still could not eat anything for sheer throat pain. So I just lived on air, and because my body fat was soon burnt up, I became as thin as a rake. I saw neither the sky nor the sea, which tossed me about unceasingly and tortured my half-dead body … In Cape Town I could not meet the bishop … because my tongue was completely dysfunctional. When we finally disembarked, I had to be supported, so frail I was. It was not a pretty sight.“ A year later Prior Francis returned to Europe to attend the general chapter. „I remember only one thing about this journey,“ he wrote, „that I became extremely seasick, especially between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town and that I did not eat or drink anything at all.“ One of his monks wrote, „It is certainly not a pleasure trip for him because he is usually so sick at sea that traveling costs him much self-denial.“ Abbot Francis sailed the Atlantic three more times. Before he died, he said, „I would gladly become seasick a thousand times over if by doing so I could save just one immortal soul.“

Contrary to widespread opinion, Abbot Francis did not find it difficult to relate to women. Obviously the women in his life were mainly religious women for whom he had the highest regard, as is evident from his desire to establish communities of sisters wherever possible. Sadly the first woman who played a role in his life died too young. Of his mother, Wendelin writes that he did not know her as she had died when he was only three. What impact her premature death had on his future development can only be surmised, but thankfully he had close relationships with the other women in his family. He dearly loved his stepmother who loved her Wendelin. It was she who persuaded his father to send him for further studies, and she made the sweetest omelets for him when he came home during his vacations. She also paid for a new statue of Our Lady for his parish church. His older sister Crescentia was his housekeeper for nine years, and his stepsister Catherine was a staunch supporter of his mission in Africa. Outside his family, Wendelin seems not to have entertained any close relationships with women.  Georg Vonbank, his roommate at school, writes that he was „correct in demeanor and lifestyle“ and „controlled and disciplined in the use of his time.“ He does not mention any female friends in Wendelin’s life, nor does he allude to any of the typical escapades so common among university students, but states that Wendelin „chose his friends wisely and associated with only a very few.“ Apparently the fairer sex did not belong to his closer acquaintances. Does this mean that he had problems with women? Nothing in his biography suggests this. All we know is that he related easily to everyone and had no inhibitions. According to the testimony of his friends, he was an outgoing, singleminded, upright young man who gave generously of himself. These qualities made others feel at ease with him, and his trusting, accepting outlook on life as well as his unwavering loyalty greatly influenced his friends. Why did Wendelin not consider marriage? We do not know the ultimate reason because all he tells us is that, while he was in Italy, he decided to be a priest. He and his friends, unspoiled country lads with academic ambitions, had gone to Padua in search of a challenging city life and new friends. Wendelin hoped to obtain a degree in engineering at the University of Padua, which excelled in this field. However, his hopes were soon dashed. Abbot Francis writes: „Most students, especially those from Venice, Milan, and Genoa, seemed to come from very rich families. They lived frivolous, dissipated lives, lounging around the coffee houses in the afternoons and spending whole nights at balls, theaters, and other disreputable places, but sleeping off their hangovers in the morning. Only very rarely these fine signori attended lectures …. In this situation I discovered my vocation. Observing the detestable behavior of the Italian students and generally being confronted with corrupt city life, no other career or way of life than the celibate held any attraction for me. So while I was undecided when I came, after less than a month in Padua I knew I would be a priest.“ These lines give us a glimpse into Wendelin’s inner life. It is marked by a high regard for personal integrity, concern for public morals and a desire to serve the Church. These are the traits of a man with deep insights. According to. author Fr. Francis J. Moloney (Free to Love: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience) they look beyond marriage and family while not denying the beauty of human love. „A life of chastity,“ writes Moloney, „is nothing else but the existential consequence, which flows out of the prior experience of the urgent presence of the kingdom of God.“ Wendelin chose his vocation freely out of love, and it would be very wrong to conclude that his relationships with women were strained. On the contrary, the restraint such relations placed on him later as a priest and monk grew from internal freedom and an acceptance of the „discipline of circumstances“ (WH Vanstone, quoted by Moloney). These commendable traits drew women, but also many likeminded men, to him who were able to trust their own powers to love by giving themselves to the Church’s missions. The Cure of Ars was once asked how he managed to overcome temptations against chastity. He admitted that it was by a vow that obliged him to say a daily prayer to the Immaculate Conception. In view of Wendelin’s devotion to Mary, may we assume that he said a similar prayer? Our Lady was not his substitute for women, but the woman beyond compare, whose virtues he contemplated and they inspired him to appreciate women. To Mary he dedicated his priesthood from the beginning and later he advised the sisters: „As you walk in and out of your houses, remember to imitate Mary. She is the Immaculate Virgin, the Queen of Virgins, Mother Most Amiable.“ As a true Cistercian, he sang her praises: „There were and there are innumerable holy virgins, but Mother and Virgin at the same time, there is only one. The beauty of Mary has made the Heavenly City of God the City of Mary.“ Abbot Francis invoked Mary’s help when he built a church for the African people. He once wanted to name a new church after a European shrine because he felt that this could strengthen the faith of the people. He wrote, „Who knows whether Our Lady will not show herself just as gracious to them as to the people in the old countries, and whether this will not result in the conversion of many.“

In Part 1 of this article we saw how Abbot Francis related to women in general and to Mary, the Mother of God, in particular. He became a priest to serve everyone in the Church, but much of his missionary ministry was at the service of women, especially religious women whose cause he promoted. Devoted to Mary, his mother and queen, Abbot Francis learned to regard women with the eyes of God: „Just as Mary, a woman, shared beyond all measure in the saving work of her Son, so the Red Sisters share in the work of the missions.“ Words like these are the fruit of enlightened contemplation on the mystery of salvation: If God chooses a woman to be his closest collaborator, no one is entitled to degrade women. On the contrary, women are indispensable precisely because God has made them so. Abbot Francis acted upon this truth. He knew Mariannhill’s missions needed women if they were to succeed. Women were needed in Mariannhill to help the Trappists, for „the men alone cannot do it.“ This insight prompted Abbot Francis to establish the congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood. Soon the sisters were indispensable in the schools, which the Trappists opened in Mariannhill and on the stations. The Founder held them in the highest regard: „Give me a hundred of these sisters and Africa will soon be won for Christ.“ Though they initially depended on the Trappists for everything, he encouraged them from the outset to form an institute of their own and establish themselves as partners in the mission, stating, „You are our helpers, not our maids!“ Women realized that this Trappist missionary welcomed women and they left everything to join him in the work of evangelization, first in Bosnia and later in Africa. Some women gave up what the world considers important – status, wealth, fame. Attracted by his dynamic personality, they left Europe and everything familiar, and learned foreign languages so that they could immerse themselves into their missionary activities. The young Baroness von Schweighofer, who wanted to join the sisters, is said to have asked Abbot Francis to cut off her blond braids just before she embarked in London. Wives and mothers together with their daughters joined the sisters; those women who were unable to join the sisters supported Mariannhill financially. It is not widely known that Abbot Francis was instrumental in establishing several other communities of women besides the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood – Sisters of Mercy and Adorers of the Precious Blood in Bosnia; Holy Cross Sisters and Dominican Nuns in Natal, South Africa. He would also have helped Trappistines and Holy Cross Sisters to settle in Bosnia, and Franciscan Sisters and the Poor Clares in South Africa, but his plans were frustrated. He praised the Mercy Sisters of Agram (Zagreb) in Croatia for raising the moral standard in that society by educating the girls. He held Mother Mauritia Diefenbach, OP, of King Williamstown in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa in high regard for her intelligent and innovative approach to missionary work. He also corresponded with Countess Maria Ledochowska, foundress of the Peter Claver Sisters, about antislavery issues. For the majority of sisters Abbot Francis was a father figure, the „Reverend Father,“ but for a few he was their counselor in personal affairs, a teacher and guide. He promoted the talents of these women and empowered them to accomplish the tasks entrusted to them. He wrote the following about Sr. Hilaria Poll, who was later the superior general’s representative in South Africa: „She is very gifted, refined and gracious in manner, a firm character, and pleasant. Skilled in domestic work and farming …. She is sharp and not afraid to speak her mind, but at the same time, quite modest.“ He held mature people in high regard. He helped those women who were scrupulous, but spineless women earned his scathing criticism. Mother Paula Emunds, though forty years his junior, merited his respect and confidence. She not only shared his vision but also the determination to implement it. She once said that just looking at the Founder inspired her with confidence. Sr. Angela Michel, his faithful attendant at Emaus, overcame her educational limitations by painstakingly taking down Abbot Francis‘ dictations when his eyesight failed and his hands started to tremble. She kept a record of his prayers and reflections; and it was from her notebooks that a collection of his „Maxims and Sayings“ was compiled. Towards the end of his life she shared in his painful sufferings and eventually he died in her arms. The Founder supported the sisters‘ desire for independence from the Trappists and the Church’s recognition. He wanted them to do missionary work by using every appropriate means and not feel inferior to anyone: „They use the latest inventions and need not fear competition. Since now the road is open for women lawyers, physicians, and philosophers, why can we not also have female graduates of Technology and Physics? If women can handle spoons, why not also a trowel?“ Women instinctively felt safe in the Founder’s presence. They may have disliked this outspoken, driven man with his rough exterior and gruff manner, but they preferred him to anyone else to promote their interests.

„The fire you wish to enkindle in others must burn in yourself“ – St. Augustine. Abbot Francis adopted the Benedictine approach to evangelization. A monastery was established in mission territory. Tenants were taught advanced farming methods and related skills. The seed of Faith was sewn in the process. The principle was ancient and tried, but its application by the Trappists in 19th century South Africa was new. The Cape Times welcomed the monks and their „Benedictine tradition by which they would teach colonists how, by thrift, self-denial, and a knowledge of farming and industrial pursuits, a land could be made prosperous by steady, earnest, and intelligent labor.“ Abbot Francis added: „Yes, every Brother, regardless of whether he leads the plow or herds the oxen, has become a missionary, for by his example he teaches our people more about prayer than Rodriguez [Alphonsus Rodriguez S.J., The Practice of Christian and Religious Perfection] with all his learned treatises onprayer.“ As a positive innovator, Abbot Francis succeeded in changing people’s lives for the better. Championing the cause of equality for the Zulus of Natal, he brought about development and growth. His principal method was a comprehensive educational program and his professed aim: the empowerment of people towards self-reliance and self-management. Realizing that this could not be achieved without a change in structures, he demanded racial nondiscrimination in all areas of public concern – education, employment, law. In his 1890 Principles for Mission he declared that Mariannhill’s aim was „to pursue and bring about an equal status for black and white people.“ His candid defense of the silent majority was like a sharp gust shaking the jealously guarded domains of colonial settlers and officials, and it earned him caustic criticism from the press. Undaunted, the founder of Mariannhill continued to buy land and settle his converts on it. Eventually, he reasoned, these would establish the first Catholic families, parishes and villages. It was this vision upon which one of his monks, Fr. Bernard Huss, based his famous program „Better Fields – Better Homes – Better Hearts.“ The daring pioneer was criticized for continually starting new projects before the old ones were consolidated. His reply was the same as Lavigerie’s, the founder of the White Fathers, „We are here to initiate evangelization; our African people must complete it.“ Like other missionaries, Abbot Francis enlisted the support of benefactors. However, a Trappist monk who spoke from personal experience struck people as unique, as, for example, when he appealed to their sense of solidarity: „The saints have always set the table for the poor even when they had nothing left to give from kitchen or pantry, because they counted on help from outside.“ What distinguished his public addresses was not so much their novelty but the refreshing style and emphatic fervor with which he promoted Missionary awareness and vocations: „Do you not feel a desire in your heart to leave your homeland and go to Africa as a missionary?“ His flaming appeal could not fail to enkindle a response. He magnetized the youth. Women and men followed him, many of them, likeBernard Huss, „experts in humanity, ready to share all its aspirations and at the same time people who had fallen in love with God,“ as Pope John Paul II would say about missionaries later. His founding charism pulled them along on the steep path of a venture that required additional courage and generosity because the Mission to the Zulus had only just begun. Jesus said, „I have come to cast fire on the earth and how I wish it were blazing already!“ (Lk12: 49). Abbot Francis paraphrased these words: „I want the fire to burn in Africa – now!“ So powerful was his impact that after a few years his monasteries in Bosnia and South Africa saw several hundred members. In addition, he established two new religious communities: the Congregation of Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood and the society of the Franziners, a forerunner of priests volunteering for some time in the missions, such as the Fidei Donum priests inaugurated by Pius XII in 1957. However, the most revolutionary change Abbot Francis made was his attempt, as a Trappist monk, to combine the monastic lifestyle with active missionary engagement. Though this was precisely what his spiritual ancestors, the Cistercians, had done in medieval Europe, he called his monks who were working in 19th-century Natal simply the trailblazers of the real missionaries of the future. Once these would come and take over, the Trappists would again resume full monastic observance. Meanwhile, he asked from candidates only a lively faith and the spirit and skills of a pioneer. „A turbine and a brother who can install it are more useful to me than the most splendid picture of a saint and a brother decorating it.“ Soon the mission stations he established across Natal and the Transkei developed their own dynamic. The Trappist priests he put in charge found it increasingly difficult to integrate monastic observance with missionary engagement. Twice the founder made a formal request for a mitigated rule that would allow them to do mission work within the context of the rule, arguing that it was a shame for Trappists to recite long prayers in choir when millions of people had not yet seen the light of faith. „I believe,“ he wrote, „that there is greater joy in heaven over one converted and baptized Zulu girl than over 99 Trappists assembled in the monastery chapel, having no need of baptism.“ Each time his request was ignored. Nevertheless, in order to pave the way for an alternative mission practice, four years before his death he drafted the statutes of a new missionary society, which he called propaganda piccola. This society would be directly responsible to Propaganda Fide in Rome and would adopt from the Trappists only practices that were compatible with mission work – a contemplative spirit, discipline, simple lifestyle, and pioneering expertise. Members would be in close contact with people’s needs and free to serve the local church. His draft was put on hold. Today the founder’s vision meets with a much better reception than 100 years ago. After Pope John Paul II called for missionaries to be „contemplatives in action“ (Redemptoris Missio, 90), many new ecclesial communities endeavor to combine contemplative and active lifestyles for the purpose of evangelization.

If anything captures people’s imagination nowadays, it is the esoteric. Literature on the occult is in; the business booms. It may therefore be appropriate to share with our readers what Abbot Francis has to say about the influence of the evil one, which he experienced, as also St. Paul did in his encounter with Elymas in Cyprus (Acts 13:10-11). Concerning the existence and influence of the devil, Abbot Francis stood on firm theological ground. Origen had written that, in struggles such as losses, dangers, insults and accusations, the intention of demonic powers was not to help us endure suffering but „by means of these sufferings to provoke us to fierce anger, excessive sorrow, the depths of despair or, more seriously, to induce us, when wearied out and overcome by these annoyances, to complain against God, claiming that his control of human life is not fair or righteous. Demonic powers intend to weaken our faith, deprive us of our hope and persuade us to abandon true doctrine in favor of some evil belief about God“ (On First Principles 3.2.6). Abbot Francis was keenly aware of Satan’s wiles. However, by invoking his Christian faith and his personal motto „Run so as to obtain the prize,“ he outwitted him. „The work of evangelization is much too slow,“ he wrote. „The devil and his legions exhibit much more zeal and inventiveness by promoting superstitions and unbelief than Christians do by fighting to exterminate these.“ And: „The devil has done mission work for millions of years … and shows no sign of exhaustion. To dislodge him, the Sisters of the Precious Blood are needed in frontier missions!“ Jealousy, mistrust and several other obstacles had to be overcome before the Catholic Church in Bosnia and South Africa could flourish. Opposition came not only from government circles, it came just as often from fellow missionaries, as is evident from the following observation: „Two Protestant ministers have been complaining to the chief … that wherever the Trappists settle, their own mission is doomed. You see, whenever we step on the devil’s toe, he immediately starts moaning in his accustomed old way.“ St. Peter admonished the early Christians: „to be sober and vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour“ (1 Pt 5:8). Abbot Francis believed that the devil could possess a person: „I have forgotten the names of all our enemies in Bosnia except this one … He was the devil incarnate, using every trick, scheme and stratagem to prevent the construction of the bridge we so badly needed. Since then I have often wondered how it was that I did not tum as gray as a donkey in those days.“ Abbot Francis tried to defeat the devil at his own game. The following is a passage from his article Everything is harnessed“: „St. Joseph the Carpenter is the saint we harness most of all. For quite some time now we have also harnessed the devil. That impudent fellow must also carry stones towards the building of the church because he has the cheek to make his likes abuse and slander us. Little does he think that as a result of his cunning schemes even more men and women wish to join Mariannhill.“ “ … the devil must also carry stones“? The founder is quoting a proverb that he had applied already as a priest in his native Vorarlberg when with God’s help, he had been able to arouse his parishioners from spiritual inertia (Rev 3:3) and transform them into a vibrant faith community. At one time he had confronted the demon of mammon head on, as he made him „carry stones“ for the church in the persons of two lapsed parishioners. He writes, „I invited two of the richest men of my parish, both factory-owners, who were hardly ever seen in church, to donate a set of new stainedglass windows. Eventually one wanted to outdo the other in generosity. When the windows were installed and their names appeared on them, even their pious wives could not trust their eyes.“ At another time he approached the famous banker Rothschild in London for a donation. „I knew quite well who Rothschild was, but I also knew that the man who introduced me to him was a Montgelas, cousin of Count Maximilian Joseph Montgelas who fifty years earlier had robbed the church of Vorarlberg and Tyrol. Therefore I let this man work for me according to the old proverb: ‚The devil has to carry stones for the church.‘ “ Mariannhill and its missions were desperately in need of helpers. Abbot Francis appealed not only to young people but also to parish priests and bishops. His words sound prophetic: „Do people really believe that a few hundred White Fathers, Benedictines and Trappists are enough for so many millions of non-believers and just as many millions of devils? … Should not many more have the courage to wage a holy war? … If the soaring flame of the Sacred Heart of Jesus cannot spur us on to spend ourselves for the salvation of so many souls, let us at least feel ashamed at Satan’s fervor. He has apostles everywhere – in urban and rural places – and he uses the daily media to spread his message. The railways are his carriers and the idlers of the world his subscribers. While we rock ourselves in idleness in the hammock of the boat, he is lurking in his hiding places and holding the keys to the arsenals, ready to blow us up when his hour has come … The devil’s ardor is so great that he establishes international societies and convenes meetings for his purposes; he is found and served in the basements of the whole world. Yes, he did missionary work among the people of Africa long before we knew them.“ Abbot Francis’s greatest desire was to do God’s will, but this will was not always easy to discern, except when an otherwise good and worthwhile project met with many obstacles. In such cases he was sure that God wanted the project, precisely because the devil tried so hard to prevent it.

The currite- „run“ -St. Paul speaks of was second nature to Wendelin Francis Pfanner. As a student he had learned his Wilhelm Tell well: „He who considers too much will accomplish little.“ Acting on advice like this, he made it his habit to do everything with great speed; the German word for „at once“ (sofort) occurs 39 times in his „Handwritten Memoirs“! At work or play, young Wendelin was always in a hurry to outdo others. For the monks at Mariawald Monastery, this was a problem: „He is too quick and rushes others!“ The Franciscans in Bosnia called him a perpetuum mobile (always on the go). Abbot Francis himself wrote about his missionary approach in Africa: „Our speed does not please the Protestants … the same complaint as in Bosnia. I simply say: ‚Come first, grind first‘ … Therefore we have constructed a pre-fab house and will take it to our next mission station on wheels – ready-made.“ (The station was named Loreto!) Why was Abbot Francis always in a hurry? „Because time to establish missions was never more favorable than now; never before has the price for an acre of land been so good … Therefore, let us work while we have the light of day.“ (Jn 9:4) And work he did. Concerning another mission station he wrote: „Everything went blow by blow, like lightning. The same hand that shook another to settle the deal was also the first to undertake the construction. For this reason we call this station Blitzberg [Flash Mountain] … where thunder and lightning are frequent. Why not? I thought that Brothers and Sisters by their prayer and the power of the Cross can drive the lightning away from this place! So we shall have the verse from the Three young Men in the Fiery Furnace inscribed on the lintel: ‚Lightning and clouds, bless the Lord‘!“ Abbot Francis‘ currite followed a strategy. He wrote: „The fewer resources a missionary has, the quicker he must be to speculate and the sooner he has to show himself in a new territory. Only if he acts without delay, will he obtain the most suitable parcels of fertile land in the healthiest climate – all for the most favorable price. What is needed is resolution, action … plans made by a cozy fireside most often come to nothing.“ Or quoting a Chinese proverb, he said, „He who hesitates too much spends his life balancing on one leg.“ Many did not appreciate the Founder’s tireless activity as he adapted Christ’s word to the missions: „I have come to cast fire on the earth and how I long that it would burn already!“ (Lk 12:49) For them his insistence „I want it to burn in Africa – now!“ was a thorn in their side. But Abbot Francis was not deterred. He was not a calculating trader or politician, but a Missionary hungry for souls. Seeing so many people without the true faith, he could not look on idly, but had to wrestle with „the great and holy work of foreign missions“ (Pius IX, urging the Trappists to establish themselves in mission lands). He pondered what Francis de Sales would have done in his situation: „I am ready to admit that, if a mistake was made, it is my fault. For if I had been a saint … I would not have done things in such a great hurry. I wanted everything to be accomplished at once – the second monastery before the first … Now when quick and slow – oxen or people – come together, they will clash. At that time (in 1878 in Bosnia he was 55) I was so fiery that, if I had had to create the world, I believe I would have done it in one day instead of six, and so I would have collided with the good Lord Himself. However, now (at 63, in 1888) my quick temper has slowed down.“ Had it really? The Founder continues: „Meanwhile steam has become powerful in the world – people travel by steam, work with steam and speak with more than steam. Why then should we not also build monasteries with steam and do mission work with steam? In fact, I believe the time has come for us to think with steam and also sleep with steam … All those who know Abbot Francis will easily guess why he chose currite as his motto … Francis de Sales had almost the exact opposite maxim, but then he did not live in the age of steam.“ The perpetuum mobile never regretted his quick manner. In 1903 at the age of 78, he wrote: „Truly I don’t understand the Italian proverb Piano, piano, si va lontano (Less haste, more speed). This word is diametrically opposed to St. Paul’s currite, which is also my motto.“ With prophetic vision Abbot Francis saw a Christian Africa arising and Mariannhill playing a central role in bringing it about. He would open new mission stations before the existing ones were firmly established. He would hurry and be quite unable to keep pace with the Trappist Order – or the Order with him. To establish the Church in Africa was a matter of immense importance to him and far more urgent than reciting psalms with long intervals. His currite, though it eventually cost him dearly, bade him overcome every obstacle. When he was called to account, he gave up all he had „to possess the one precious pearl,“ saying with St. Paul: „As long as only Christ is preached, no matter how, for expediency or in sincerity. That is what makes me happy now and will continue to do so“ (Phil 1:18). In 1892 Abbot Francis was suspended, and some time later he resigned and retired. He spent 15 years in solitude at Emaus, his last station, and then this restless „Runner for Christ“ – „Obedient Rebel“ – „God’s own Drummer“ returned his life to God to rest with Him forever. The obituary in the Monastery chronicle pays tribute to him: „He had set himself a huge target … and took measure only by it. He did not go by fixed standards or available resources but only aimed at reaching his goal as quickly as possible – currite! “

If humor is the ability to rise above things, then Wendelin Francis Pfanner excelled in it. The following incident from his childhood is well known. Wendelin attended a wake at a neighbor’s house where the spinster Anastasia (Stasl) led the mourners in prayer. As she kept saying one Our Father and Hail Mary after the other, the little imp became impatient and blurted out: „And now we say an Our Father for Stasl!“ Everybody laughed and the wake was over. At age 21, Wendelin did his last college year at Innsbruck. Several classmates decided to study one year at Padua and were about to leave. Wendelin caught their spirit of adventure and died to join them, but could he dare leave without his parents‘ knowledge? He did. However, having used his meager allowance to pay for the coach across the Alps, in Padua he soon was out of pocket money. How could he tell his thrifty father that he was in Padua in need of money? Again his shrewd wit showed him a way. Apparently without any qualms of conscience, he wrote to his priest-uncle, very supportive godfather and brother of his father: „Dear Uncle, my long travel report“ – referring to a letter he had purportedly written earlier! – „has already informed you about the wonderful trip we had and how I am doing in Padua. Allow me herefore to come straight to the point: Please, ask my father to send me a money order which I can cash with one of his business friends here and give my very best regards to …. “ The uncle was proud about his nephew’s academic ambitions and only too happy to comply. When Wendelin came home half a year later, he regretted only one thing, „that your first letter which must have been most interesting did not reach me.“ Four years later we find Wendelin as Fr. Pfanner in Haselstauden. A typhoid epidemic there claiming several lives called for a different kind of humor. In his „Memoirs“ Abbot Francis writes, „As I was going round trying to comfort the sick, I realized that I was the only one who still dared to enter homes which everyone else shunned for fear of contagion. People discovered that in private conversation I was a very different man from the pastor who on Sundays read them Leviticus. I even joked more than is normal at a sickbed …. Relatives were often so wrapped in grief that I made it a point not to leave them in that mood. So with light humor I tried to lift their spirits and took much satisfaction from the fact that some were more resigned, yes, even cheerful than when I entered.“ By becoming a Trappist, Pastor Pfanner had to restrain his jolly side. „I must confess that in the novitiate my kind of fun caused me quite a few problems because as a Trappist one is expected to suppress such ‚worldly‘ impulses.“ Fr. Francis, as he was now called, did so, but when he found himself in Bosnia, his sense of humor revived. Once he smuggled bells into the Muslim country, but when he rang them, the pasha protested vehemently. How could he break the resistance? Abbot Francis writes: „An opportunity presented itself when during a prolonged drought the ground was so dry that even the Muslims prayed for rain. Seeing how desperate they were, I offered to have our Brothers and Christians help them pray, provided we could ring the bells to call everyone together. You see,‘ I explained, ’storming heaven together makes prayer efficacious.‘ For a moment they eyed me with suspicion and started whispering among themselves, but because they were desperate, they agreed. So we merrily rang our bells and continued to do so long after the rains had come and gone again and our fields as well as theirs were green!“ Sometimes the country gentry (Begs) came to visit the Prior at Mariastern Monastery to ask his counsel or solicit help for their sick. But Fr. Francis was not always available. „I might be doing the weekly laundry when they arrived. Occasionally it happened that, standing right in front of me but not recognizing me, they asked me where the gospodin (boss) was. Now how could I pass up such an opportunity and not take these gentlemen for a ride by sending them away to look for me? When they returned and recognized the gospodin at the wash tub, they were beside themselves: ‚A gospodin doing his own laundry?‘ For me that was precisely the lesson I was trying to teach them.“ Another time the Prior gave some Begs a tour of the monastery grounds including the cemetery. „Awestricken, they looked at the crucifix: ‚Is he still alive?‘ Whereupon I told them to ask Him themselves. Such were welcome opportunities to tell these people about our faith.“ On one occasion Prior Francis dressed like a Beg himself. „The costume had been pressed upon me by the bishop who said that he feared for my life if on my travels certain fanatics should recognize me as the Prior of Mariastern. It consisted of light blue harem pants (bloomers), an embroidered red leather belt, and a turban of yellow flowered silk, normally worn by the aristocrats in Constantinople. In this outfit I had my picture taken in town and then rode straight towards Mariastern. Not recognizing me, our workers and tenants bowed to the ground in utter obeisance before this illustrious visitor. I got a kick out of their abject homage, and it was only, when after some time I returned their greetings, that they knew who I was by my voice.“ Another time a fellow traveler asked the Prior if he was perhaps a chimney sweep. The question intrigued him so much that he told him all he wished to know about Trappists. Later he wrote down the conversation and published it as a promotion brochure „Are you a Chimney Sweep?“

For Francis Wendelin Pfanner the world was full of wonders and created to be enjoyed. From age 13 (1838) when he entered the Stella Matutina high school at Feldkirch, he fed his eyes and mind on the beauty of his native Austria, marveling at its breathtaking sceneries when he observed them either on foot or from the window of a horse-drawn carriage. Later he hiked with his classmates to Innsbruck. Touching down briefly in Germany, they descended to the Inn Valley and climbed up into „hunchbacked“ Tyrol. Part of their vacations was usually spent exploring the Alps together. It was probably his wrestling with 4,000- meter high peaks that challenged him to feats of courage and perseverance that farmed his character more than anything else. Abbot Francis believed that „Not to dare is tantamount to lack of trust in God.“ And later: „The human heart grows wider no less contending with financial straits than by facing dangers.“ In 1846 Wendelin and three friends went to study physics at Padua. Since they had no money for fares, they went on foot from Innsbruck along the Brenner Pass to Bressanone (Brixen) and from there by mail coach to Roveredo. The final stretch via Verona and Vicenza to Padua was by horsedrawn cab. Sadly lectures and social life in the venerable old university city turned out to be a huge disappointment. „The only diversion available to us was a trip to the lagoon city of Venice … and since a rail connection had been opened recently, we could ride a train – a first time experience!“ They thoroughly enjoyed themselves, but the call of Vorarlberg’s mountains was stronger. So they wrote their exams earlier and left Padua. A train took them to Verona and a cab to Lake Garda – where they „could not resist stopping by for a swim.“ The 36-kilometer decline from Pavia to Milan was negotiated on a canal „in which Napoleon had installed a new lock system. What pleasures! We could not see enough of the fascinating world all around us and, after spending a few days at Milan, decided also to visit Como – sheer paradise to me! Even now when I think of it [in 1888 at age 63!], the boat ride on the lake enchants me.“ Abbot Francis mentions several adventures along the way. At the Villa Gonzaga-Simonetta outside Milan, the attraction was an echo that could be heard from a certain window, e.g., a small laugh creating a rippling effect and a single pistol shot echoing back 20 times. In Monza they were shown the royal palace, and while the guide hurried ahead opening doors for them including the (absent) queen’s bedroom, it so piqued one of them that in an unguarded moment he did a somersault on her bed, only to boast afterwards that he had „shared the queen’s bed.“ They crossed the Splugen Pass on foot, took the stagecoach down the Via Mala to Chur, returning home with their „knapsack full of impressions and memories.“ The Italian experience whetted Wendelin’s appetite for travel. During the last vacation before his ordination, we see him backpacking again alone, because no other student in Brixen or Innsbruck had the money to come along. His destination was Cologne on the Rhine. From his Memoirs we know that few people traveled in those days. As an example, he mentions his priest uncle who had once visited Munich and then kept talking all the time about that one single journey. „But what was Munich in 1819 compared with the Munich I saw in 1849?“ Wendelin had carefully saved every thaler of the money his parents had sent him for books, so as to take in as many sights as possible along the journey. It was tough going. „My mode of traveling was still quite primitive: walking and carrying my money in my belt, which was swollen with thalers of 20s and quite heavy to carry.“ Except for the eight kilometers by train (still drawn by horses to save on coal!) from Nuremberg to Ftirth, there was no rail service from Munich to Augsburg or Bamberg, Würzburg, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Mainz, Koblenz, Bonn or Cologne; neither was he able to take a train on his return journey via Speyer, Freiburg, Strasburg and other historical cities. But he did not complain except that every duchy and principality he entered had used a different currency and dialect causing him to lose money in the exchange and making communication difficult. Nevertheless he was proud of his achievements: „I was perhaps the most urbane and traveled student in a thousand!“ Down the Rhine he hiked following his own sense of direction, but the cities he explored following a printed guide (Baedeker). In Cologne he admired the cathedral nearing its completion and would have visited Aachen and Brussels had it not been for an unfortunate blister that prevented him from going. In Speyer he mused on St. Bernard’s famous line „o clemens, o pia, o dulcis virgo Maria,“ completely unaware that one day, as a Trappist, he would wear the same habit and travel the same roads as his Cistercian patriarch had. In Basle he was saddened that the cathedral was no longer Catholic. He also narrowly escaped arrest because his cap was just a little too much like the caps the 1849 freedom fighters wore. Lake Vierwaldstädt compelled him to exclaim, „What a jewel! One forgets eating and drinking!“ Finally after stopping at Einsiedeln „to ask Mary to help me become a zealous priest,“ he sailed across Lake Constance to Bregenz from where he walked the three hours home to Langen. His father was already waiting for him and putting a pitchfork in his hand, welcomed him with the words, „I know you have much to talk about, but that must wait until Sunday. First we will bring in the hay; the weather is just right.“

Once Wendelin Pfanner had caught the „traveling bug,“ he was never cured of it again. After the escapades of his student years and frequent visits to health resorts when he was parish priest in Haselstauden, „the desire to travel seized me again like a whirlwind.“ In May 1882 the first Japanese martyrs were canonized in Rome. Fr. Pfanner attended, „although widespread agitation for self-rule made Italy as unsafe for travel as Croatia.“ He took part in several papal audiences and „saw more in 18 days than others see in three months, because I was up at the crack of dawn, ready to explore the city and armed with nothing but a travel guide and map. Every day I covered another section and said Mass in another unique church or basilica.“ He did not eat at the hostel but along the way and thus was able to visit the seven principal churches in one day, a feat no one wanted to believe. Abbot Francis relates an amusing incident that‘ occurred in front of the Sistine Chapel. As he approached the portals, he found everybody of note assembled there: Pope Pius IX was to attend a memorial Mass for his predecessor – an excellent opportunity to see the pontiff at close range. But two Swiss guards barred the entrance; admission was strictly by ticket. The Vorarlberg pilgrim had no ticket, „in fact, I did not even wear ‚a wedding garment‘ … but only my short cassock.“ Should he admit defeat? Not Wendelin Pfanner! With his typical impish with he addressed one of the Swiss guards in the Vorarlberg dialect, akin to Swiss, and in no time was whisked up to a place right behind the cardinals. „Every dog has his day! I thanked my [deceased] mother for not speaking High German with us.“ The experience taught him to pray that he might be „small“ enough to gain entrance one day at the heavenly gates. Rome was not the only attraction. „I also saw Naples, for Napoli vedere, poi mori (to see Naples and die) is not an exaggerated boast. Naples is indeed the most splendid city in Western Europe.“ With fellow tourists he rode all night up Mount Vesuvius and at dawn reached the place where slip rock made the final ascent too steep and dangerous for horses. The custom was to hire porters and let oneself be pulled up by a belt. Not so Fr. Pfanner. He climbed to the top and stood dangerously close to the crater when the others arrived. They warned him that the edge could cave in, but he shrugged it off: „These English and French gentlemen were probably doing their regular daily gymnastics … but they were no match for one exercising naturally.“ Afterwards they visited the recently excavated ruins of ancient Pompey and saw among other things „an oven still having the [fossilized] bread which a baker had shoved in 1800 years earlier.“ A year later Fr. Pfanner accompanied a group of pilgrims to the Holy Land. „I expected this trip to be my last … before entering the monastery to prepare for my final journey to the heavenly Jerusalem … However, I believe that it was precisely this pilgrimage which prepared me for all future travels.“ As was his custom, he spontaneously decided on the journey, paid his fare, sent for oriental literature including a pocket Arab dictionary, ordered a saddle from Lepoglava Penitentiary [where he was confessor], „because Arab saddles were known to be a torture for Europeans,“ and went to Trieste to set sail with his group. „When the bell rang, I went with the others to the dining room, but in no time everything started spinning around me. Seasick already! I never sat down for meals again.“ He suffered terrible discomfort all the way to Haifa. Unable to go ashore, he had to rely on his companions to tell him about the weather, life on deck, and what they had seen of Corfu, Rhodes and other islands. „I was upset with myself because I could not believe I would get seasick after safely traveling by water in Italy the year before … and climbing the highest steeples and mountains without feeling dizzy … But I suppose there are different kinds of Schwindel [German for swindle and dizziness].“ The pilgrimage owed much of its success to the guide’s penchant for organization and economy. With money left over, they could visit Egypt, unaware of what adventures were awaiting them. In Alexandria it was the treacherous pilots who would not relinquish their luggage except for baksheesh; in Cairo they realized that transport was only by pack-ass, and the bazaar „beggared all description.“ But they did admire the Sphinx and Fr. Pfanner – in long boots and cassock! – climbed the Cheops Pyramid, „allegedly the world’s highest building,“ before he crept inside where the stark reality of memento mori [remember that you must die] was brought home to him. The former would-be engineer eagerly watched the construction of the Suez Canal, but back at the hotel he came down with dysentery „of which they cured me with rice water.“ The worst experience, however, was the discovery that his walking stick and coat containing his diary were gone. „Though dismayed, I soon comforted myself: as a Trappist, I would need neither staff nor diary.“ How mistaken he was! Cairo was only the gateway to a continent waiting to become his home. After Egypt we find Fr. Pfanner sailing the Hellespont to Constantinople, „the most beautiful city I ever laid eyes on!“ He could not guess that one day he would „walk down a pair of shoes“ on its hot cobblestones. Across the Black Sea by boat and to the Danube by train, he sailed on a „nice Hungarian steamer through the ‚Iron Gate‘ [at 135 kilometers it was Europe’s longest gorge], a trip that refreshed me in body and soul.“ Hiking and riding through Serbia and Dalmatia, a Save-boat finally brought him to Agram after a nearly three-month absence.

Father Wendelin Pfanner entered the Trappists at Mariawald, Germany, in September 1863 and was sent out again in July 1867 to establish a new monastery. Now his traveling activities assumed a new quality: he no longer traveled in his own interest but on behalf of his Order, the Church or the missions. Abbot Francis has left us an account of his travel habits as a monk. They show a man who had little regard for his own comfort but acted from a strong sense of mission and the desire to witness to his faith and monastic vocation to his fellow travelers. His religious habit was a telling sign of his commitment: „I was the first Trappist monk who traveled through [anti-clerical] Germany in the white [Cistercian] habit. My two superiors lacked courage to do so.“ (Memoirs) He was given only one habit, „not because the monastery could not afford two but because no one had more. For the same reason one did not receive an overcoat and only rarely a hat or a change of shirt and underpants.“ Socks were made of thick cloth, and shoes were worn only in church. From January to mid-July 1868, we find Fr. Francis in the malaria-ridden swamps of Tre Fontane near Rome. There the summer’s heat was oppressive, but fortunately for him one of his brothers was assigned to the laundry, „and I could get my habit washed, the second time it was given this honor since I left Mariawald.“ Clearly the rule of only one habit needed adapting and Prior Francis changed it, allowing every monk to have a second habit in his cell. Only twice the Founder traveled incognito. In Bosnia the bishop considered it unsafe for him to ride about unarmed and recognizable as the prior of Mariastern. He sold him his own coat and encouraged him to wear customary traveling clothes. Prior Francis obliged and dressed like a Turkish landowner, had his picture taken and rode into Mariastern where he set everybody guessing who he was. The second time it was his Irish bishop in South Africa who insisted on buying him secular clothes for his voyage to Europe. Again, he complied reluctantly. „I felt deeply ashamed for not showing my true colors when meeting Anglican clergymen on board always wearing clerical dress.“ Between 1881 and 1889 the Founder journeyed to Europe four times and back always extremely seasick. Seasickness was one of the reasons why he later opted against retiring to Europe, but he also stated that he „would gladly become seasick a thousand times over if that would save one unfortunate soul who did not yet know God.“ One secret of his success in soliciting support and promoting vocations was his agility of mind and movement. „Pater Franz“ was a name known from the Balkans to the Baltic, from Paris to Constantinople. In Berlin people actually paid admission to see him. Notwithstanding his legendary fame, however, he retained his simple habits. His audiences – he regularly addressed fellow passengers on the boat – soon discovered that he was authentic: austere monk on a mission. His eating habits, dictated partly by a sensitive stomach, were more than frugal, consisting at sea of rice and water with an occasional egg added. The Story goes that he sometimes did not peel his egg because he had „paid for the shell too.“ No wonder that passengers wondered why he did not eat like other church dignitaries. He replied, „It would be more penance for me than eating frugally.“ Furthermore, he writes in his Memoirs, „In order to save on [train] fares, I always traveled alone and third-class without interrupting my journey so as not to have to book into a hotel.  .. All I ate was an apple and Graham bread [crackers], and when these were finished, I bought some more in the station.“ True to his motto „eurrite“ (hurry), more than anything else it was the time factor that determined Abbot Francis’s mode of travel. As he had no secretary, he packed as much work as possible into every journey. „I preferred traveling all night so that I could conduct my growing correspondence during the day. On winter nights third-class coaches were not heated, so I often traveled three or four hours in the morning chill. But that did not prevent me on arrival from saying my Mass and breviary. The morning hours were reserved for sermons and occasional talks, if I was invited in the evening, I would not get to bed before midnight. Many times, I preached myself warm, i.e., I climbed the pulpit with knees buckling but came down feeling warm. I did not stop preaching before I was warm.“ In December 1875 Prior Francis went to London to solicit support for Mariastern and learn English. On his way there he nearly got caught in a German-Italian student revolt at Würzburg and in the Channel he got seasick. He arrived at the German Church in Whitechapel in time to celebrate the three Christmas Masses and afterwards listened to an inspiring sermon by a German dissident priest, who had escaped Bismarck’s anti-clerical Germany. He stayed with the Winkelmann family of Westphalia and, among other sights, saw the Chrystal Palace and the Abbey of Mount St. Bernard’s at Whitwick. He was impressed by fellow Trappists producing their own gas from coal, using the coke as fuel, and running a whole array of energy-saving machines by steam. But what most amazed him was that they turned marshland into arable ground by dynamiting nearby rocks and sinking huge chunks of rock into the swamps to drain them. Topping his European journeys was an express trip across the Mediterranean in1882. In Algeria Trappists were distilling pomade for the Paris market from geraniums they raised in plantations. Could this be a solution for his monastery in arid Dunbrody? He must see for himself. So, he „flew“ non-stop from Freiburg to Marseilles, by night steamer to Algiers, in four hours to Staoueli, spent 36 hours inspecting everything and returned to Paris in time to attend an extraordinary general chapter. When he reviewed his travel activities in Emaus, the old Abbot sighed, „O great God! How much you have made me tumble about on this humpbacked earth until I could finally say hie dormiam, hie requieseam – here I will sleep and take my rest.“

Biographies of famous people abound in examples of men and women who climbed from humble circumstances to greatness. Wendelin Francis Pfanner, from the forlorn little Austrian village of Langen, was one of them. His anecdotal remembrances of his travels in Europe’s major cities make fascinating reading even 150 years later. They tell the story of a person who was passionately in love with people, but even more so with God.

Constantinople

Fr. Pfanner was entranced by the sheer beauty of this area – The City of the Golden Hom and Gate to the Orient. He had visited it on his return from the Holy Land. In 1870 however, his mission hardly left him time for sightseeing. He had just settled his monks in Bosnia and was building a permanent monastery when the local pasha threatened him with court proceedings unless he produced a valid building license. Fr. Francis relied on a recently enacted law allowing Christians to build, but the pasha had not heard of it and dismissed his argument, „probably expecting me to pay him baksheesh (bribe) to expedite service.“ The prior, taking a huge risk, threatened that he would report him to the Grand Vizier in Constantinople. „When a man of substance appealed against a pasha, he traveled by land – Bosnian Turks were not yet used to traveling by steamboat or train – never to return, because the pasha surely had him strangled en route … Jonah could not have had greater misgivings on his way to Nineveh than I had traveling to Constantinople.“ He had a letter of reference to the Austrian consul, but Osten-Prokesch told him on arrival that, judging from previous cases, he practically stood no chance. To top it all, Prussia had marched its troops into France and the Grand Vizier was kept busy with diplomatic exchanges. With the pasha still instigating court cases against him, his cause was transferred to the sultan. Where was he? Francis visited the Supreme Councilors in their villas, but found them conveniently not available, out or disagreeable. His courage sank. Even the beauty of the countryside – „more beautiful than any I had ever seen“ – and the chiming of the Angelus from 12 steeples at the same time gave him no relief. The heat forced him to stay indoors most of the time. He seems not to have seen the sights in Constantinople: Saint Sophia, the bazaars, the churches, palaces and monuments. Only after three months Monsieur Le Bidart, the consul’s Catholic secretary, succeeded in getting the Grand Vizier to grant a permit for a „house with 60 rooms.“ A huge relief! Abbot Francis writes, „If I had won all the gold mines of California, I could not have been more jubilant.“

Naples

When in Italy, Fr. Pfanner wished by all means to see Naples. „Napoli vedere, poi mori say the Neapolitans: to see Naples and die! How true! Naples is the most magnificent and beautiful city in all of Western Europe.“ He took a steamboat from Ostia and with other tourists rode up Mount Vesuvius during the night. The horses had to be left at the last hotel where porters were hired to carry tourists up to the crater’s mouth. Not so for Fr. Pfanner! „I suppose most of these French and English gentlemen had done their gymnastics in younger years, but they could not compete with one grown up in the mountains – a natural gymnast.“ Fr. Pfanner was also reckless. „As soon as the first porters reached the edge of the plateau and saw me standing at the crater’s mouth, they shouted to warn me that in some places cavities lurked beneath the edge.“ Afterwards he explored the excavations of Pompey. Could he believe the stories he was told? They reported „they were just digging up an oven and discovered that the bread the baker had shoved in 1800 years earlier was still fresh!“

Paris

In 1881 the Trappists held their general chapter in Paris, because anticlerical legislation forbade them to assemble in their motherhouse Sept-Fons. They met in secular clothes at a count’s residence and kept the venue strictly secret, so secret that not even the archbishop could direct Prior Francis, who had just arrived from Cape Town. So, he booked into a hotel preferred by clerics and the following morning said Mass at St. Sulpice. Fortunately, he had changed back into his habit and was recognized by a fellow Trappist. He was scheduled to address the chapter both in the morning and afternoon on his experiences in Africa. He was also to defend the Trappist dietary laws which the majority of the abbots wished to have relaxed. He did so with his usual bombastic energy and was utterly exhausted afterwards. „I had talked myself into such heat that all I wanted was to breathe again. Outside I stopped the first coach that came along and told the driver to take me to some open places to cool down.“ In his memoirs Paris stands for victory won at great personal cost. As a student, Wendelin did his second-year philosophy in Padua, Europe’s third oldest university, and there discovered his vocation to the priesthood. During the Year of Revolutions (1848), his third at the seminary, he marched all the way down the Rhine to Cologne to deliver his fellow seminarians‘ contribution towards the Cathedral Building Society, which still preserves his signature. In 1863 on his return from the Holy Land, he stopped in Egypt: explored the Cairo Bazaars, scaled the Cheops Pyramid (in a cassock!) and saw with his own eyes the progress made on the Suez Canal. He paid for all these adventures by coming down with dysentery and having his coat stolen, in addition to his precious diary. His only consolation was that as a Trappist he felt he should have no need of either. Every time he visited Zurich, he loved to ride on its beautiful lake, so different from Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad) on the Baltic, where he preached about the missions, or Vienna where he solicited not only from the Minister of War but also from the emperor himself.

Rome

The Eternal City held special attraction for Fr. Pfanner, as it was known as the city of the Apostles: the „Mother and Head of all Churches.“ He visited Rome for the first time in May 1862 to attend the beatification of the first Japanese martyrs. His Memoirs vividly capture his experiences. „Though I stayed for only 18 days, I saw more than many see in three months. On my feet from dawn to dusk for 12 to 16 hours every day, I explored the city using a printed guide and map. I avoided time consuming meals and instead bought a snack in the streets … In the evening no one believed that I visited the Seven Principal Churches in one day and even said Mass [Eucharistic fast!] at Saint Sebastian’s [Catacomb].“ While touring the Vatican Museums, he chanced upon a select group of ladies and gentlemen waiting in front of the Sistine Chapel. A cardinal was celebrating Mass for a deceased pope and Pius IX and the curial cardinals were in attendance. A one-time chance! But how could he get in, being neither dressed for the occasion nor in possession of a ticket? Would he be defeated? Not Pfanner. In his inimitable way he turned to a Swiss Guard speaking to him in Swiss dialectical Alemannic: „Surely you’ll let a countryman pass, won’t you?“ In no time he was ushered through the heavy curtains to a prize seat right behind the cardinals. Another surprise awaited him: „For the first time I heard the true Roman [Gregorian] Chant!“ After 1862 the founder visited Rome many times. The rector at the Dell‘ Anima was his friend; from there he called at Propaganda Fide usually on business for his missions in Bosnia or Africa. Knowing Italian was a great help, but so were the contacts he had made earlier during his seven months stay at Tre Fontane. There the surrounding marsh had been a perfect breeding ground for malarial mosquitoes, all the more dangerous because there was no treatment for the disease at that time. One of his Trappist brothers was dead within a month. Today old eucalyptus trees shade the Shrine of The Virgin of Revelation across from Tre Fontane, and there is a plaque at the shrine stating that the trees were planted by Francis Pfanner. The water-loving trees gradually turned the tomba (burial place) of the Roman Campagna into habitable ground again by drying up the swamps. The renowned and delicious Tre Fontane liqueur is made from the eucalyptus. Francis had an extraordinary experience at Tre Fontane. A whitehaired man stood at the gate and called to him, „Why are you wasting your time here? Go to Turkey. Much work is waiting for you there!“ When he wanted to shoo the stranger away, he had vanished just as mysteriously as he had come. „Only later, when building roads in Mariastern in Turkish Bosnia, I remembered the beggar of Tre Fontane. Perhaps he had a message for me.“

Jerusalem

In 1863 Father Pfanner led a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The experience strengthened him in the resolve to turn his life in another direction. „When Jerusalem came in sight, we knelt down to pray Psalm 126, ‚Laetatus sum …: How happy I was when they told us that we were going to the House of the Lord. We wept for joy!“‚ They were received with great honor and accommodated at the Austrian Hospice. Pfanner was fully occupied receiving and returning visits, attending dinners and interpreting for the members of his group. „I had no peace day and night and was always the first to rise and the last to retire … On the other hand… I was privileged to celebrate Mass in places barred to others. Never, for example, was I so moved by the Lamentations as when I heard them sung by the exquisite voices of the Italian and Spanish friars in the very place Jeremiah himself wept. The night of Good Friday I also heard the Seven Sermons preached in seven languages in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher … But was I ever annoyed hearing the French speaker raving in that most holy place about la grande nation and the civilization it spread… “ „On Holy Saturday I witnessed the great scandal occurring every year during the Creek blessing of the fire.“ The founder relates how everyone wanted to be the first to light his torch composed of a bundle of six or more candles tied together from the one the patriarch passed through a small opening in the Chapel of the Sepulcher. „This would be carried overhead to the people waiting outside… The belief is that the pilgrim who succeeds in bringing the holy fire all the way from Jerusalem to his home country, let’s say Russia, receives a special blessing and is certain to go to heaven when he dies. Watching from the galleries how the jostling crowd fought for the light and beat each other on the head and destroyed each other’s torches was absolutely frightening. Although an entire Turkish company of soldiers was supposedly posted to keep law and order, fatal incidents were inevitable. I saw a particularly fanatical, baldheaded Greek forcing his way through the crowd. He was heavily beaten on the head and finally collapsed … How a Catholic grieves to see ’such abomination in the Holy Place!‘ … I was chosen to represent Austria at the Washing of the Feet, but far greater was the privilege – given only to visiting personages – of saying Mass at the dawn of Easter in the Holy Sepulcher itself.“ Jerusalem was memorable for a very special reason. Pfanner consulted a well-known spiritual director about his plan to become a Trappist. „Having in all frankness revealed my present and past circumstances to him, he strictly advised me against it. But as for me, the longer I traveled, the more irresistibly I felt drawn precisely to the Trappists.“

Agram (Zagreb)

From 1859 to 1863 Fr. Pfanner was the confessor to German-speaking sisters in the capital of Croatia. Here he received extraordinary graces. After having recovered from a serious illness „just because the sisters prayed so hard for me,“ he still suffered from a chronic lung condition. He was upset by his illness, the anti-foreigner attitudes in the capital and a spiritual restlessness that came when he spoke to the sisters about their vows and commitments to God. He too felt the challenge of doing more for God. While praying to know God’s will, he began to consider monastic life and soon decided in favor of pursuing this kind of life but did not know which Order to enter, until he met two Trappists. While asking them about their life, he heard an interior voice telling him, „This is for you!“ He entered Mariawald intending to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penance. But God had other plans for him. After four years he was sent to found a monastery „somewhere in the Danube monarchy.“ Returning to Agram, he explored Croatia looking for a suitable estate. Many were offered and benefactors also gave generously towards a purchase, but God obviously wanted to test his faith. His highest superior would not give his consent to the proposed establishments. The commissioning of Fr. Francis to start a foundation had only been a pretext to move him out of Mariawald. In Agram he received the letter to that effect. It threw him into a conflict of conscience. „Not knowing what to do, I heard a voice telling me to go to Joseph.“ He did and recovered his peace of mind. It turned out that his case could only be solved in Rome. After seven months spent mainly at Tre Fontane, he was able to return to Agram, this time with a new mandate by the Church to carry on with his foundation. Though times were most unfavorable – being liberal, anti-Catholic and seething with nationalism – he believed in his mission. He obtained Cardinal Haulic’s acceptance, but the newly constituted parliament voted against the establishment of Trappists in Croatia. Only after much more hard work and many setbacks would he realize his mission, founding a monastery not in Croatia but Bosnia. There Mariastern still gives testimony to his undaunted faith and the truth that „God chooses what is weak in the world in order to put the strong to shame“ (1 Cor 1:27).

 London

At the end of 1875 Prior Francis visited London. „I traveled to London to collect alms for our monastery and the orphanage we intended to build.“ Why should England, so rich in colonies, not contribute like other countries had done to the colonizing efforts of the Trappists? He was disillusioned. English Catholics were themselves poor. By the time he escaped the foggy weather for sunnier climes, only Rothschild’s mother had given him a small donation. However, his visit was successful in other ways. At 2 a.m. on Christmas Day he had arrived at Bishops Gate Station. A French-speaking Englishman had called a policeman to show him which coach to take to St. Boniface, the German Catholic Church in Whitechapel. Though he had been quite seasick during the voyage, he said three Masses and felt uplifted by the powerful sermon of a Fr. Gabriel, who had fled Germany for opposing Bismarck’s anti-clerical May Laws. Gabriel arranged accommodation for him. „On Saint Stephen’s Day a kind angel introduced me to a German family who gave me free bed and board.“ Rather than learn English, for the next two months he explored the city. „London was an altogether new world and lifestyle for me,“ he writes. „[I learned a lot] crisscrossing the city every day by train, steamer, tram and omnibus, cabs and carriages, underground and above ground.“ He visited the Crystal Palace and, having read about the Great Exhibition (1851), he was fascinated by what he saw – the engineer he had once dreamed to become fully alive in him. He saw how the industrial revolution had propelled Britain into prominence. He marveled at the world’s largest organ, saw the first aeronautical exhibition (1868) and motor show, and in Hyde Park admired (copies of) some of the greatest works of art from around the world. What an industrialized nation England was that it could build fountains, comprising close to 12,000 jets, the largest throwing water to a height of 250 feet! He visited the Trappist Abbey of Whitwick near Leicester and was utterly astounded by what he saw. „The area is partly swamp, partly moor and rock. They dig deep quarries, bury stones in them, and so convert them into arable land. They use steam power for their machines: a welder’s bench for iron and wood, bellows for the smithy, a drill. They also cook with steam, and steam brings water to the stables, lifts or winds up the sacks and drives the chaffer. There are three different machines for the laundry. The monks run a reformatory for boys between 13 and 17, who have been sentenced for theft and cheating to 4-5 years. They provide them with land to cultivate, and with the proceeds from the farm and various trade shops finance the institution. Since the Trappists came 40 years ago, the Protestant neighborhood has turned Catholic with six churches of its own.“ The prior’s visit to London affected his future endeavors. He knew now that whatever technical innovations he introduced at Mariastern, though criticized by the French visitator, were nothing comp a red with what he had seen at Whitwick. His contacts in Whitechapel also stood him in good stead in later years. St. Boniface was to be his home during future stopovers. He could deposit his heavy crates there, and the monks and sisters in his company could go to Confession before taking sail for Africa. One parish priest sent a Mr. Stordeur to assist his Trappists in The Cape with money and expertise when they needed it most to make a successful exodus to Natal; another recommended to the Natal Land and Immigration Board the prior’s plan to establish an industrialagricultural school in Mariannhill and thereby obtained reduced fares for him. Most of all his belief in England as a power granting freedom of religion and promoting progress in its colonies was strengthened. Today his faith may seem naive, but after the Christian oppression he had experienced in Turkish Bosnia, this gave him an added incentive to conquer Bosnia and subsequently Africa for Christ.

Que habla dos lenguas vale por dos: The person who speaks two languages is worth two. Francis Pfanner made this Spanish saying his own. An avid traveler, he heeded the advice: „Own only what you can carry with you, know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your traveling bag.“ Ultimately it was people the founder was most interested in. So he learned their languages. Joy Brain calls him „a language genius.“ Francis‘ language lessons began at age 13. To enter high school, he needed to have preparatory Latin. So he walked for miles to take lessons from the parish priest across the border. He „declined and conjugated his alo and amo so well“ that, except for writing poetry, his study of Latin at university posed no problems. At the seminary it was polished and, no wonder, because his professor was Vincent Ferrer Gasser, the same man who made „Latin history“ at Vatican I. On July’11, 1870, Gasser presented to the council fathers a four-hour Latin speech on the decree on papal infallibility. He composed it himself and presented it with such conviction that it was approved with only minor changes by the majority of the bishops who were still present, and it was solemnly defined a week later. The same Gasser awarded Pfanner a „very good“ in Oriental Languages and the learned Alois Messmer gave him a „first class honors“ in Greek. Latin helped Fr. Francis with the eight-hour Offices as a Trappist; Latin quotations from Scripture were a trademark of his writings. He gave his first address in Dunbrody in Latin because the many English priests present spoke Latin better than French. When he wished to be precise, he used Latin; clara pacta, boni amici was his way of saying that friendship endures when agreements are clear. Latin was also useful to drive home a point: Una stultitia facta est, non alia „one foolishness has been committed, not another!“ he thundered at Bishop Jolivet of Natal the first time they met, insisting that the 10 oxen wagons hired to take his monks to Saint Michael’s Mission had to be stopped immediately. He was not going to repeat the mistake of settling the Trappists a second time in a remote and arid region, as they had been by Bishop Ricards in The Cape. Latin helped the young Pfanner to learn other languages. He taught himself Italian during his three semesters in Padua. A friend remembers: „When Wendelin entered the City of Saint Anthony, he did not know Italian. But after he had sat several days and nights with his Fornassari, he could follow lectures, and at the end of the year we all passed with flying colors. Since then he has demonstrated time and again how easy it is for him to enter into the heart of the idioms around him. Once we were all mighty proud when, pointing in our direction, the professor of Religious Philosophy said, ‚Quei quatro Tedeschi sono l’esempia della scuola!‘ holding us up as model students.“ By learning Italian, Pfanner unwittingly acquired the language he needed for his travels in Palestine, Egypt and Turkey. He not only discovered new lands but also began to see people with new eyes. Because he spoke Italian, he could take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, welcome visitors to Tre Fontane, the site of St. Paul’s martyrdom, hear confessions and converse with Roman prelates in that language. When he was asked to plead his case against a higher superior at the Church’s court of appeal, he wrote his defense in Italian. That language opened to him any city on the Mediterranean coasts. In 1859 proficiency in Italian also made him volunteer as a chaplain to the Verona battlefields, though fortunately the action was over before he was recruited. We do not know when or where Father Francis learned French, but we do know that he knew it well at Tre Fontane in the summer of 1868, where he lived with Trappists who were mostly French, „none of whom spoke Italian or Latin in a way one could understand…. So Pere François had to wrestle with the French pronunciation of the Psalms and also look after the French pilgrims.“ When in 1879 he volunteered to go to Africa, he interpreted for the Irish missionary bishop and the French chapter fathers, and two years later he gave a progress report on Dunbrody – in French. Unfortunately he did not have much opportunity to practice his French in later years. Though he could still read it, he told his French abbot general in 1908 that he no longer wrote it. After nine years in the parish ministry, Fr. Pfanner was sent to Agram (Zagreb), the capital of Croatia. A German-speaking priest was needed for a large convent of sisters and their German boarders. That relieved Pfanner of the need to learn Croatian. He also did not join resident Croatian priests for a game of cards. „Why, I would have had to speak a language I disliked enough to never even attempt to learn it. There was also no need for it, since I was soon to return home again. Alas, I did not know that I would once speak that language for such a long time that it actually became like a second home to me!“ Can a language become a home? Some say it can and even must. Goethe asserts that one discovers one’s mother tongue only in another language: „The person who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.“ And to Charlemagne is ascribed the dictum that „to have another language is to possess a second soul.“ Pfanner eventually lived in Croatia for years and, having to deal with Croatian landowners and parliamentarians, he learned the language in no time. Eventually he founded Mariastern in Bosnia. There the Christian minority was Croat, and Croatian was spoken, besides Bosnian, Serbian, and Turkish.

Faced with the need to learn Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian, Fr. Francis left the family of Romance languages and entered that of the South Slavic. The administrative and literary Ottoman Turkish, however – Bosnia had been annexed by the Ottoman Empire 400 years earlier – was a Central Asian language derivative. Fr. Francis understood it well enough to do business with the pasha, the judge and Turkish landowners. The challenge to adjust to all these languages and accents was formidable. One can picture him in the early days of Mariastern ministering to the sick at the monastery gate „with a medical guide in one hand and a Bosnian dictionary in the other.“ A year later in Constantinople, he learned Bosnian properly. „While waiting from May to August for a building permit, I did various studies and especially learned Bosnian.“ It meant that all management, gate, government and business relations at Mariastern rested on him. In 1880 he left Bosnia for Africa. When he returned briefly three years later to resign as prior, he had forgotten the language. „I had spoken it only once to a Dalmatian sailor, but I remembered well how his accents had been to my ears like a melody from home.“ While still in Bosnia, Francis visited London partly to learn English. However, since he stayed with the German Bonwinkelmanns, opportunities to speak English were minimal. „Because the days were short, I had much time to work at my desk. I wrote long articles for the feuilleton of the Vorarlberger Volksblatt [the supplement for a popular daily newspaper in his home province], but I did not want to begin with English any more. Why should I? It would be of no use to me. How mistaken I was!“ He did learn English and, because of its many derivatives from West Germanic and Norman-French, learned it relatively quickly. In 1880 while bound for Africa on board the Duart Castle, he and his brothers were given lessons by several priests and a seminarian travelling in Bishop Ricards‘ company. On July 11 he noted: „Yesterday I wrote my first English letter and I believe that we will soon learn that language. It is so easy compared with Bosnian.“ Two weeks later when the prior and his monks were working on the land surrounding the provisional monastery of Dunbrody, Ricards gave a sample of his written English to a friend: „We have work as the lions, and when we all days till new year so hew down the spines, we shall arrive to Tunis.“ By November of the same year the prior’s syntax had much improved, considering that he had almost no opportunity to practice English. Telling the bishop about some cows given to Dunbrody, he wrote, „The Brothers have burnt the mark in them, but one was so wild that the Brother could not stop her. She became furious and ran through the door of the yard into the bush in a few moments. The cows are so savage it is dangerous to come them near and particularly to milk. I do not know are they so wild at Grahamstown [Ricards‘ residence)? Or they have the apprehension of the habit of the Brothers?She slinked one of the Brothers who would milk her down. If you do see her when traveling back and forth, the cow fugitive had the mark of Dunbrody and she bears a cord about. .. Excuse, my Lord, when I speak so faulty. I beg my Lord to correct me and say me the faults in return … “ Perhaps the bishop did, but he also had fun with the prior’s desperate attempts at the „linquitch“ [language]. At Mariannhill Prior Francis was even more interested in learning English than before. He was disappointed when a catechist’s command of the language was too poor to teach a class of youngsters. So in 1883 he brought 18-year old Alfred Bryant of Birk beck College, London, to Mariannhill and appointed him English teacher to the monks. In Natal, the most English of colonies, English became their official language. But there were the local languages to learn as well. The prior explained that language described the culture it came from and reflected the values and concepts most dear to it. Consequently language being their most important link to the people they wished to reach, the Trappists should never impose their language on people, but rather help them become proficient in the native tongues as a means to overcome their present powerlessness. Less than a year after Mariannhill had been founded, Fr. Mathieu, OMI was asked to come once a week to‘ teach‘ Zulu. Fr. David Bryant was his model student and soon, together with a catechist, he opened the first school at Mariannhill. Later he left the Trappists, but as a missionary, he continued to carry out extensive research in Zululand, edited a Zulu newspaper and was appointed expert for Bantu Languages at the universities of Johannesburg and London. Meanwhile Mariannhill’s other linguistic genius, the founder himself, had too many commitments to also learn Zulu. However, he made sure that the monastery printing press supplied books in all required languages. In January 1887 the Port Elizabeth Telegraph reported that „having complete founts of type, Mariannhill is sending forth its tomes not merely in the vernacular but in foreign and classical languages … English, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic.“ Unbelievable as it may seem, even at 83, or half a year before his death, Abbot Francis promoted language. Dictating a draft on „How to Organize the Youth,“ he proposed that leadership courses for the young should include public speaking and native dialects. These, he argued, had to be cultivated because they represented a vital aspect „of the antiquity of world history.“ It was not only important to speak a language well, but to speak it in such a way that one could be understood. He spoke from experience. Reminiscing about his lobbying efforts in Constantinople in order to obtain a building permit, he dictated, „The gentlemen I had to see there spoke indeed many languages, but they did not understand my request.“

Abbot Francis Pfanner is admired for his tremendous vitality: courage, trust, initiative and sheer boundless energy. Like the people of Nazareth (Mk 6:2), we might ask, „Where did he get all this?“ The answer is: from none other than Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. His other sources of strength, like personal and financial support and favorable circumstances, are insufficient to explain his heroism. At his very first Mass in his native Langen, Christ led the new priest to sense his own unworthiness, and he did so again 13 years later in Jerusalem. „Standing in the very place where Jesus shed his Precious Blood for my sake, I could not help reflecting on how very little I was doing for Him. It cost him excruciating pain to save us. But here I was, consecrating bread and wine at no cost to myself at all. The thought of Christ’s munificence and my utter insufficiency quite overwhelmed me.“ On both occasions Father Pfanner made firm resolutions: as newly ordained at 24 years of age, to become a good priest; and as a 38-year-old, to become a good Trappist. He reasoned: What good is the power to change bread and wine, if I myself am not changed? He determined to become an alter Christus – another Christ. In essence that had been his prayer all along: “ … to know ever better the will of God [for me].“ It was the goal which he shunned no effort to achieve, the prize he was willing to pay and the prize he was running to obtain: currite (motto). The Eucharist was also the hidden source of the energy that characterized his missionary activity and of the strength with which he bore his sufferings. Endeavoring to emulate Christ’s example of atoning love in the Eucharist, he undertook to bring others to that inexhaustible fountain. As parish priest, he was particularly happy to see more and more men approach the altar. It was the fruit of many catecheses on the Holy Eucharist and particularly of the many hours he himself spent in Eucharistic adoration. In due time his efforts gave rise to a number of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Later as a Trappist in Bosnia and Africa, he set aside monastic austerity in order to promote devotion to the Real Presence by enhancing, quite against Trappist custom, Eucharistic services with beautiful vestments and music and holding colorful Corpus Christi processions. His teaching on the Holy Eucharist was rooted in Scripture and theology. It was not necessary, he said, to imagine that Mary placed the Host on the tongue of the receiver, for despite her holiness she was not a priest. Another time he reprimanded certain sisters who left Mass before the final blessing in order to prepare breakfast for him. He said that they had their priorities wrong: „Jesus comes first; the priest can wait!“ One of his conferences on the Holy Eucharist was so profound that it deeply impressed his listeners. They could tell that his words came straight from the heart; he lived what he taught. „Although the mystery of the incarnation is so great that it can never be fathomed,“ he explained, „it was still not great enough to satisfy God’s infinite love. God wished to work a still greater miracle. His purpose was to remain with us, not only as God in spirit, but also in the flesh as man. To achieve this, he had to work a whole string of miracles. Is that not enough matter for meditation? Then why do you still complain that you are unable to meditate?“ He said that just to be aware of the infinite love of God for us human beings should be enough to occupy our minds. If one did not do anything else all year long than meditate on this truth alone, the year would not have enough days. „All God’s attributes are infinite;“ he added, „if they were not, one would have to say that love surpasses the others. Should God in his omnipotence have desired to give us more than he did, it would have been impossible, because he already gave his own self. No one can give a greater gift than himself or what he possesses. As it is, God’s love has set his omnipotence a limit, as it were …. I suppose that I need not spell this out for you, because you surely reflect on this at least every time you receive Holy Communion, don’t you? But if someone still does not know what to do or what resolution to make, she is confused, because in the presence of such a great love as God’s love has for us, every child knows what to do.“ Abbot Francis gave moving examples of his Eucharistic devotion. When the first superior general of the sisters was elected, he spent the night before the Blessed Sacrament, and in the morning he knew that his prayer for the candidate of his choice had been heard. Except for the times when he was too seasick to stand, he said Mass every day until his eyesight failed and his hands trembled too much to hold the chalice. In an age before concelebration, he said the privileged Mass of Our Lady from memory. When he was no longer able to walk, he asked to be carried on a chair to the chapel for the Convent Mass and on Sundays also to the Parish Mass. His love for the Eucharist inspired many. Like „a grain of wheat“ sunk into the ground, this love nourished the life of the communities he had established and through them the entire Church. A telling example is the saintly Mariannhiller, Fr. Engelmar Unzeitig. Fellow prisoners testified that he was sometimes so lost in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament that he missed the roll call. His love for the Real Presence ultimately gave this „Angel of Dachau“ the strength to make the supreme sacrifice of his life.

The Eastern Star in its issue of August 13, 1884, reported about a „revolution“ taking place under the very eyes of the colonists. „In Mariannhill an institution for orphans and homeless boys of all creeds and nationalities has been started. The children are schooled, educated, lodged and fed entirely free of charge. Apparently equality is the motto of this institution, as all classes and colors are mixed, and live together without distinction. This system is one which will not recommend itself to the majority of the colonists. The equality sought can never be attained as long as colors of races are dissimilar. Perhaps experience will teach the good Trappists the futility of any attempt to place black and white on an equal footing. But we acknowledge their self-sacrificing zeal and commend their efforts in setting an example of industry and energy to the colonists around them, and for the amelioration of the condition of the homeless and poor.“ Apartheid was a system of legalized racial segregation enforced by the National Party of South Africa between 1948 and 1994. The rights of the majority of citizens who were classified as non-white were curtailed, and minority rule by white people was maintained. But the concept of racial segregation and separation had already begun in colonial times. It was based on the idea of white supremacy and excluded all non-whites, blacks in the first place, but also Indians, Chinese, Malays and people of mixed origin. (Apartheid as an official policy was introduced following the general election of 1948.) The British colonial rulers established a system of Pass Laws in the Cape Colony and Colony of Natal during the 19th century. It regulated the movement of black people from their tribal areas to those occupied by whites and coloreds, as well as from one district to another, without a signed pass. Black people were not allowed onto the streets of towns in the Cape Colony and Natal after dark and had to carry their passes at all times. Abbot Francis resisted this color bar. As early as 1884 he accepted white orphaned boys whom the bishop brought to Mariannhill and gave them an education. Trouble could have started – as the Eastern Star feared – when he also admitted black boys to study alongside these white pupils. But nothing happened. The principle was: „No color bar at Mariannhill!“ It worked. The founder explained: „The harmonious relationship between white and black boys is best seen at play. Curly black heads are intermingled with straight blond ones like multi-colored beans in a bag. Because the black boys do not yet understand English, the white ones speak Zulu to make themselves understood at play. This certainly does not show that white boys despise blacks. Little dogs and cats also eat from the same bowl, play together and sleep on the same rug. Only when children are stirred up against each other, as white South African parents are prone to do, do problems arise. The black boys are still taught and instructed in religion in Zulu, but we want them to also learn English, and so we have asked the white boys to speak only English … The boys work side by side in the workshops and fields. They receive the same food from the same bowls in the same dining room, and the slices of bread they receive are cut from the same loaf. Elementary and advanced classes are open to both blacks and whites.“ Abbot Francis reported that white visitors expressed shock when, during a tour of Mariannhill, he took them to the printing shop where a black boy was just setting type. They frowned with disapproval. „I know what they were afraid of: this black boy might become a printer and occupy the place now held by whites only. A real possibility! But why not? One thing is certain: if for any reason this black boy has to leave, I will certainly not replace him with a white one … Christ himself warns us not to scandalize the little ones (Mt 10, 18), much less to throw stones at them as if they were dogs … St. Paul makes no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, slaves and freemen; then why should we? … After getting off to a good start, we can honestly say that the experiment is going well. It really works!… Not a single white boy ran away when black boys were admitted. No one has done harm to the other or so much as lifted his hand against him.“ Abbot Francis considered it his Christian duty to raise the social, spiritual and moral standard of the oppressed majority. „If everyone despairs of our black people, I don’t … Education and rational occupation will secure them too an honored place in society and the Church.“ When told that his efforts on behalf of the blacks were love’s labors lost, his reply was: „The time will come will find out whether they stood on the right side of the fence or not.“ The allusion was to the Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892, one of a series of measures by which a desperate colonial government tried to stem the tide of black migration to the cities. It instituted limits, based on financial means and education, to the black franchise and was followed in 1894 by the Natal Legislative Assembly Bill by which Indians were disenfranchised. Abbot Francis was deeply disturbed. After resigning from office in early 1893, he took time to study the whole question of racial discrimination. In September he proposed a solution in the Natal Witness. The audacity! His article sparked off a public debate but with positive commentaries predominating. Encouraged by the response, he drafted a comprehensive plan entitled The Native Question.

As was to be expected, the Abbot Francis‘ article on The Native Question aimed at restoring the black majority to dignified and fair living. The question that needed to be answered was how to stop thousands of shiftless idle youths from flocking to the towns and gold mines in search of riches. How could they be helped to see the futility of offering themselves to their exploiters as cheap labor as domestics or farm hands? What incentives could they be given to have a productive and fulfilling life in the reserves to which the colonial powers had relegated them? Abbot Francis proposed a village system, the tried and true Benedictine method proven in Europe. Villagers were to be given land, bt:1t rather than force them to cultivate it under the supervision of whip-swinging overseers, they were to be educated and trained in agriculture and other useful trades by experts in the field. The government would have to play a decisive role, because without its legislative power and financial aid, the system could not function. Experts would need to determine boundaries and map out roads. Funds would have to be voted and allocated towards establishing a viable infrastructure by supplying building materials and installing processing mills in the villages to boost productivity. The founder’s objective was clear: each man was to be empowered to earn his living, build himself a solid house and take responsibility for his family, as well as for the land allotted to him. This would lead him to a true love of the soil. But that was not all. Abbot Francis envisaged not only material wellbeing for the oppressed, but a life lived in freedom and dignity. Leaving the question of ownership until later, he did his best to address self-determination. With initial assistance and supervision, he argued, villagers would eventually establish their own councils and courts of justice, in other words, govern themselves. If that stage was achieved in line with human ethics and Gospel teaching, the rest of society could not but reap rich dividends in terms of peace and economic progress. The founder of Mariannhill was not just being idealistic. Investments might at first be costly but the results would be profitable. He asked the white colonists to consider the results of this plan versus that of appropriating the land of their black brothers and forcing their labor. There was need for a change of mind here. The village system, he maintained, had no substitute, for it alone guaranteed the black majority a place in a society where their human rights and personal dignity were respected. In 72 steps he spelled out the ramifications of the system. His plan was first taken up in The Cape. A government-appointed commission studied the possibilities of implementing his system. They visited 54 places and interviewed 600 persons from all walks of life. In Natal the discussion warmed up only gradually. A government official hailed his proposal as absolutely timely and not at all utopian. „If we do not elevate the Zulus now, they will degrade us later. The abbot is not naive. We cannot preach the Commandments to people and enforce our laws on them when we do not observe these ourselves.“ But farmers and business people resented the loss of cheap labor and feared the Zulus would become potential competitors. Despite the example of Mariannhill’s successful educational system and flourishing mission settlements, they demanded proof that the Zulus were really capable of hard work and self-government. Eventually their arguments boiled down to the question of costs and how much of human dignity blacks really possessed to entitle them to equality or justify the efforts made on their behalf. Most of the white people could not visualize a multiracial society, so great was their fear of those whom they considered inferior to themselves and who had therefore remained strangers to them. They called themselves Christian, but what could black people expect from them? Statistics showed clearly that their contacts with whites had not made them better human beings. Crime, alcoholism and idleness were on the increase in the slums. In the 1890s the social conscience of the Natal citizens was largely underdeveloped. Government officials paid lip service to reform. They praised the Mariannhill model as unparalleled in the colony’s history, but refused to take steps to bridge the widening gap between blacks and whites. On the contrary, thousands of blacks, working the mines in and around Johannesburg, were forbidden by law to be seen in the streets. „If a referendum were held among the whites today to determine what to do with the blacks, the majority would vote in favor of their extermination.“ It took a man with the courage of his convictions to make such a statement in public. Abbot Francis was such a man; he sounded his warning „before it is too late.“ But it was not heeded. In 1905 the infamous General Pass Regulations Bill denied blacks the vote and confined them to fixed areas. The abbot died in 1909, trusting that in the long run his efforts would bear fruit. Indeed they did, but the road to equality was long and painful. For the next eighty years it seemed as if South Africa would never solve the problem. In 1910 legislation barred blacks from sitting in parliament while giving whites complete political control over them and other ethnic groups. Succeeding governments prohibited blacks from buying land outside the reserves, herded them into locations and restricted their practice of skilled trades. Black paramount chiefs lost their power to the British Crown as supreme head over all African affairs. Where was South Africa heading? Humanly speaking, nothing loomed in the future but chaos and violence. However Divine Providence supported that remnant of good people who recognized the injustice of the system. Who would ever have thought that 80 years later an Afrikaner, of all people, would put an end to apartheid by releasing his staunchest opponent from life imprisonment? How Abbot Francis would have rejoiced at seeing the Nobel Peace Prize given jointly to Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, a black man from his own Cape Province!

Moses had no time for personal encounters and thus he had no friends. Jesus, on the other hand, made time for others and had many friends. – Carlo M. Martini Abbot Francis is often portrayed asa gruff man who was neither companionable nor sociable. However, Joy Brain concludes after her many years of research into the history of Mariannhill that „too much is made of the founder’s irritability or bad temper, his outspokenness or even rudeness,“ and not enough of his „persuasive powers, and charm… He definitely liked people.“ More than that: Wendelin Francis Pfanner loved people, and people loved him. This is evident in the great number of his friends who, like vibrant colors, lent depth and warmth to the tapestry of his life. We find them in his youth and old age, among his schoolmates and fellow priests, his parishioners and benefactors. They are loyal to him and he to them. „Love is a gem and loyalty the gold in which it is set“ (Zenta Maurina). Sometimes in his Memoirs the founder unwittingly lifts the veil on his friendships. He does so, for example, when he describes his exodus from Mariastern with a band of over 30 of his monks to follow the call of a missionary bishop to Africa. Their journey across Austria, Switzerland, and Germany to London takes on the colors of a triumphal march. Friends are waiting at every stopover. There were highlights: „At Innsbruck we were treated to a double ‚Tiroler Worler‘ (national dish) made from fresh milk and donated by our friends, who also brought a basketful of Italian cherries to our coach … In Munich … many of our losest friends came to see us off; we ate delicious Bavarian dumplings.“  Home of Pfanner’s friends stand out from the unnamed many. He gives them a face, as it were, by remembering them with special affection and gratitude. The first he mentions are his peers in high school and university, particularly his devoted friend Georg Vonbank. For many years Vonbank shared a room with Wendelin and so got to know him well. He later became a professor of literature, wrote poetry and supported the Trappists of Mariannhill in their efforts. On the occasion of the Abbot’s silver jubilee as a Trappist, Vonbank dedicated a short biography to him. He writes: „Wendelin never excelled as a genius or hero, neither was he known for that tall talk or churlish behavior so common among students in their duels, fraternity get-togethers and drinking ceremonies. Instead, his manner was plain and correct, his lecture notes updated, and his assignments done. For the rest, he went his way quietly. But that does not mean that he hung his head; on the contrary, he was lively, cheerful, stout-hearted and full of spunk.“ Another classmate, Johann Baptist Fessler, later parish priest in Dornbirn, though a little more critical of Wendelin, nevertheless appreciates his friendship. „If this youth with his shock of red hair hardly gained my sympathy the first time we met, he did win my trust as a friend and colleague … because of the many charming character traits I discovered in him.“ His classmate Ludwig Haitinger became a medical doctor and was the father of two well-known chemists, one of whom, Ludwig Camillo, was the founder of fluorescence microscopy and the fluorochrome technique. Ludwig describes Wendelin as „controlled and disciplined in the use of time and his manner of associating with peers. Not given to talk, he chose his friends wisely and confided in only a few, a trait usually associated with an abundance of spiritual energy.“ Abbot Francis visited Ludwig several times. Ludwig had lost his Faith. The nine letters, some quite long, the aging Founder wrote to him from Emaus are evidence of a warm concern and unbroken friendship. Another friend from university and seminary days was Dean Bartholomew Berchtold. They were particularly close, and Abbot Francis kept in touch with him until „Bartle“ died. They shared the same ideas on what the Catholic response to the challenges of 19th-century liberalism should be. Representing Catholics in the legislative assembly, Berchtold wrote a treatise entitled „The Liberal and the Catholic: A Free Commentary on the ‚The Free World Regarding the Religious Question.'“ Berchtold was one of the very few to whom Wendelin confided his decision to become a Trappist. „What I saw in the Holy Land I could perhaps tell you in person … what I knew deeply then I can only hint at in writing. The heart swims, as it were, in the unknown joys of another world. Your heart may guess it.“ His friend Thomas Amann became a monsignor and was attached to the principal Marian shrine Rankweil in Vorarlberg. He was founder-editor of the daily Vorarlberger Volksblatt and published the articles Prior Francis wrote for wider distribution, particularly his „Are you a Chimney Sweep?“, „Letters from the Vrbas Valley“ and „Observations about London.“ Heinrich Oidtmann, MD, though not a school friend, was a kindred spirit in everything pertaining to a lifestyle in accordance with nature. Prior Francis helped him to set up an International Mission of Health Vigilance, a local branch of the International Union of Anti-Vaccination Activists and the International Pioneer Society for the Protection of Persecuted Minorities. Oidtmann was also the founder of Oidtmann Stained Glass of Aachen/Linnich and a gifted painter. His portrait of Abbot Francis is probably the most authentic we have. Fr. Sebastian Kneipp, world famous for his water cures (hydrotherapy) at Worishofen, helped Abbot Francis to treat his arteriosclerosis and, like Dr. Oidtmann, supported him in his efforts to maintain the austere Trappist life against all adverse criticism. In Rome the founder had two trusted friends, the Trappist procurator general Francis Regis, whom he described as „the kindest person I ever met“ and whose grave he visited in Algiers, and his Vorarlberg countryman Msgr. Gassner, rector of dell‘ Anima, who gave him free bed and board whenever he stayed in the Eternal City.

During his first ministry, Wendelin cultivated personal relations with only a very few people. Among these was Pastor Anton Jochum. The foundation JUDPIDENT for mentally challenged youths, one of the oldest social institutions in Vorarlberg, was his work. Thirty years older than Wendelin, he was like a father to him. As Wendelin said: „He was my neighbor, and so we visited each other frequently either to assist each other with church services or just to see each other and share ideas. This man was capable of governing three dioceses at once and also had the required knowledge. However, his awkward and even repulsive peasant manners and his neglect of personal hygiene were not easy to take. This was the result of a poor upbringing and many years in the remotest mountain valleys where no educated person ever comes, and his bad habits had become permanent and beyond correction. Nevertheless, he was so esteemed that he governed all the clergy and officials in the area. “ … I had heard much about his character … and seen him once. Immediately I said to myself, truly he fits the description: a man who keeps to what he says and does what he preaches. From him I learned most for my life. He practically determined the direction I took. When I was in doubt about anything or in need of further information, he taught me. His sermons and religious instructions were what I might call demonstration lessons … When he heard that I had volunteered as a chaplain to the Verona battlefields, he came to ask me if it was true. I told him that it was, and he responded in his customary gallows humor: ‚Very well, a greenhorn like you can do such things; you make good cannon fodder. Just go; I shall make a memento for you at Mass every day.‘ „Only a few months later I had a letter from Count Bishop Gasser, my former Theology professor, asking me if I was willing to go for one year to Agram to substitute as confessor to the sisters there. I went straight to Jochum to ask his opinion. His answer was prompt: a bishop’s wish is an order. That put an end to whatever doubts I had.“ Olz was the president of the local civic council in Haselstauden and Wendelin’s soul mate, the intimacy having probably developed during difficulties they tackled together. From Agram Wendelin sent him a solemn but very moving farewell letter. „Your friend writes to you one more time and then never again. These are my parting words to the friend closest to my heart, but from now on you are to be dear to me only in the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary … The hill of Calvary and what I saw there has matured my resolution … tomorrow I flee to where my heart most ardently longs to be… The reason I take leave of you in writing is that I hope the wound of separation will close sooner if I don’t come to see you personally.“ However, a year later his parishioners, presumably led by Olz, demanded his return. The founder’s Memoirs explain: „Until my profession I was the owner of two benefices, but when I wished to resign from them as canon law requires, my parishioners almost involved me in legal proceedings in the belief that they could oblige me to return to Haselstauden, because I had promised them, when I left for Agram, that it would only be for a year.“ The prior of Mariawald undertook to explain things to them. When Wendelin came to Agram the second time, it was as a Trappist. His superiors wanted him to establish another monastery. After untold labors and setbacks he founded Mariastern in Bosnia, thanks to the assistance given him by officials attached to theAustrian consulate. The first of these was the Croat Stanislav Dragancic von Drachenfels, captain of the border regiment and vice consul of Banjaluka. He welcomed Prior Francis on arrival. „Since the only guestroom available in town belonged to a Jew, he hosted me royally.“ It was Dragancic who cleared the way for the Trappists to settle in the Muslim-ruled country. Later the prior wished to honor him. He applied for a papal distinction: „This man is a great asset … A practicing Catholic himself, he defends the Catholic cause and stands up for justice. He is hospitable towards all, especially Trappists … We need such a man until we are properly established.“ When an occasion presented itself, he had the satisfaction of „pinning the badge of the Order of Saint Severin on Dragancic’s broad chest.“ Sometime later the man was transferred to be succeeded by „much lesser personages,“ which made the prior keenly to „feel the loss of such a good friend.“ Dr. Svetozar von Theodorovic was Consul General in Sarajevo and a member of the Orthodox Church. The prior befriended him because he inspired confidence. For his part, Theodorovic believed in the prior’s integrity and supported his efforts to promote the poor rajahs of Bosnia. While he was liaisoning between Vienna and Constantinople, Sarajevo and Banjaluka, as well as between the Trappists and Franciscans, his prompt services and warm recommendations were greatly appreciated. Theodorovic showed himself a friend especially when it fell to him „to instruct the prior on his duty to observe Turkish laws.“ The Mariastern chronicler observes that „time and again the consular offices had to calm with diplomatic skill the waters the prior’s precipitations stirred . . . Fr. Francis would certainly have failed had he not had the backing of Austrian officialdom and probably even despite it, if the Ottoman Empire had not been so decadent … Humanly speaking, Francis played a game of unknown stakes; but from a supernatural perspective he was a trump card in the hands of Divine Providence, who used all the pashas and consuls to achieve his end.“ In the end even Ali Riza, the Pasha of the Banjaluka Mutessarifat, became the prior’s friend, „crying to see him leave Bosnia.“

The founder’s friends were often sent to him by God in moments of dire need. The Vicomte Le Bidart was one of these „friends in need.“ Abbot Francis honored his memory: „Belgian by birth and deeply religious, Le Bidart was dragoman or interpreter to the Austrian Ambassador Prokesch-Osten in Constantinople. After many years of experience in Turkey, he was adept at public relations. In my case he had to deal with the competent officials and take their pulse to ascertain what would be the right moment to approach them. My case … was further complicated by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War that kept the Grand Vizier and ambassador particularly busy with communiqes flying about like locusts. I saw Le Bidart a dozen times but always in vain … I never got to see the Grand Vizier. With such lords it is not as with the pope where even common people can get an audience and a blessing.“ Eventually Le Bidart succeeded in getting the Grand Vizier to approve of a monastery in the heart of Turkish Muslim Bosnia, by issuing Prior Francis a building permit „for 60 rooms.“ In gratitude Prior Francis named him among the first associate benefactors of Mariastern. As such, Le Bidart was the first to avail himself of the prier’s invitation to his wealthy acquaintances after the Austrian occupation of Bosnia to purchase property for Catholics. Many friends were won for Mariastern, Maria Dunbrody and Mariannhill by Brother Zacharias Vogt while collecting funds and postulants for these monasteries. As prior and abbot, Fr. Francis was close to some of them. Johann Baptist Trappentreu, beer brewer in Munich, was most devoted to him and offered hospitality to him anytime he was in southern Germany. In an obituary the Fraenkische Volksblatt called Trappentreu „the most generous benefactor of churches, convents and institutes of Christian charity, a true father of the poor, and an exemplary businessman.“ Munich dedicated a street to his memory and Abbot Francis named his foundation in Natal „Mariannhill“ in honor of his wife and daughter – Marianna. The Josten Brothers were dealers in ironware at Neuss. They too opened their hands, hearts and homes to the founder. At 80, Abbot Francis wrote them a moving letter. He had not forgotten that they had always treated him as a friend rather than a beggar, taking time and making plans for Africa with him. The Abbot related of the Josten Brothers, „I have got around quite a bit … but hardly have I met a rich man to bother with a poor monk over and above putting money in his hands and bidding him farewell. Believe me, it was different coming to your house!“ He had tried to be instrumental in establishing the Jostens in Natal, but to his great regret his plan had been frustrated. „I nevertheless dare to sign this letter with the expression of my warmest friendship and assurance of prayer for you and your children.“ Quite a few of the founder’s friends were printers and publishers. Ludwig Auer, „Uncle Ludwig“ of Donauwoerth, was close to him for several reasons. Like Francis Pfanner, he had what is called a social conscience. He trained jobless and homeless boys, ran a teachers training college and published Catholic literature for lay people. He discovered the prior’s „graphic, creative and gripping“ prose and gave him a small hand-press complete with type „to save you time with your correspondence.“ Prior Francis duplicated his first FLYING LEAVES on this press. Leo Russy of Burghausen was a publisher with whom the founder could share views and plans. He was known for his pioneering enterprise in the local and provincial media (establishing several papers), as a journalist and contributing correspondent, author of stage plays and books/articles on local history, etc. Abbot Francis: „When help was urgent, I could count on Leo and his wife Mary. It is impossible to adequately appreciate the many favors and services we owe to them.“ Russy printed not only the Mariannhill FORGET-ME-NOT but also the abbot’s promotional articles and letters of appeal. The founder of J.P. Bachem Publishers in Cologne became the abbot’s friend the first time they met. The circumstances were not auspicious. It had come to the abbot’s knowledge that Bachem had been asked to publish in his Coelnische Volkszeitung a slanderous letter about him. Rather than go ahead, Bachem had passed the letter on to a neighbor, a well known friend of Mariannhill. Abbot Francis went to see the publisher. „He offered me a chair. But reluctant to presume on his time, I told him that it would take more than an hour to explain things. … He got up, closed the door and said, ‚Never mind. I make time for you, even if it takes us all night‘ … When I finished, he thanked me for my frankness and gave me 200 Mark besides.“ Of the founder’s friends in Africa special mention must be made of John Swann of Port Elizabeth, on whom he could rely for assistance and expertise during his difficult years in Dunbrody. Swann admired the Trappists, especially their prior, and remained his friend also when others maligned him. They kept each other informed, and Abbot Francis visited Swann whenever he passed. Swann for his part kept the memory of the Trappists alive in The Cape by reporting about their progress in Natal in the local media. Even before entering Natal, the prior met two men aboard the Pretoria, who were to be his lifelong friends and advisers – the very successful farmer Walker, member of the legislative council, and The Hon. Gallwey, Resident Magistrate, both of Pietermaritzburg. The last but by no means the least of his friends in Africa were the Beykirch couple: he, ex-brother Wilhelm of Mariannhill, and she, the former Sr. Clara Lassack. Seeing how concerned they were to have a church built at Umzimkulu near Emaus, he helped them raise funds by giving them his precious silver spoon that was a gift for his First Mass in Langen.

Wendelin Francis Pfanner often found himself in situations from which lesser men would have run away. Not he. „I have no patience with cowards and abhor indecisive and timid people.“ As a child, he preferred competitive games; later he showed an almost compulsive tendency to argue. His fights with schoolmates for calling him „redhead“ prepared him for more serious confrontations in future. He enthusiastically engaged in lawsuits and quite generally displayed a combative attitude when circumstances were desperate. As a sophomore, he led his classmates in a small but successful skirmish against senior students. They had barricaded themselves at the bottom of a pathway below a narrow gate. Brandishing thorny branches and long sticks, they had threatened the juniors with „hell“ should they dare to pass. The sophomores could take a longer detour, but they then ran the risk of coming late for roll call. „Hot with excitement, we advanced towards them in closed formation, four to a rank and armed only with our canes, but each one targeting his man in the frontline and calculating the right move to take him on.“ Wendelin’s method seems to have been „calm resolution and lightning execution.“ At his command, his fellow „warriors“ suddenly dropped and grabbed their targets by the feet. „The first row fell even before the last one could reassemble … Instantly disarmed, they saw their weapons flying over the city wall into the deep chasms of the Ill River.“ Confrontations and hostile situations made Wendelin’s temper rise. In Agram (Zagreb), he had to deal with revolutionary youths. „The Croats expelled everything German from the city … Top hats that they paraded as spittoons in their coffee houses were their favorite targets … I was the only one still left wearing one of these, my fellow priest having long exchanged his for a cocked one. Several times a week I had to cross Jelacic Square, which was what you might call the students‘ stomping ground. A volatile situation! I was itching to lock horns with them but kept marching on, though never without my knotty walking stick… Our Lord and Master indeed told us to be humble and gentle, but he also showed us how to act firmly and twist scourges. He prefixed the ‚gentle‘ with a „Discite“ (learn from me), because he knew only too well how hard it is to attain gentleness and how quickly human nature reverts to self-defense.“ The students understood the message of the stick and clenched fists! Returning from the Holy Land, Fr. Pfanner and some pilgrims stopped over in Egypt. He had arranged a fee for the boatman to row them ashore, but before anyone knew it, the man had melted into the crowds, leaving them to two other sailors, co-conspirators, who would not release their luggage unless the Padre paid them as well. What could Fr. Pfanner do? There wasn’t a policeman in sight. „I jumped from the gangway into the boat and threw them both overboard. I held them underwater, almost drowning them, until my companions were finished retrieving our luggage.“ During his 11 years in Bosnia, he had to show his true colors more than once. Once a gang of gypsies cut down trees in the monastery woods without his knowledge. After being chased away, they promptly pitched their tents in retaliation along the road that they knew he had to take several times a week. He sued them and took his Christian tenant as a witness. His evidence was disputed because he was a Christian and the case was dismissed. Abbot Francis writes, „With my case as good as lost, I performed a coup de force.“ He stood up before the court and, making a fist at the magistrate, cried, „Bagite moju glavu!“ (Beware of my head!) Everyone in court understood this threat because he had recently won a difficult case against a fraudulent magistrate and publicly exposed him as a liar. That time he had left the courthouse and gone straight to the pasha with the magistrate still following him and denying the truth. „Red hot with anger at this flagrant lying, I banged on the pasha’s table so hard that it sent all his documents flying – a fatal crime … But nothing happened, except that next time I entered the courthouse, the magistrate took me aside and asked me if I was still angry. I understood then that lying was his strongest weapon that he would not suffer anyone to take from him. At such times my only defense was rude boldness.“ That incident was still fresh in everyone’s mind, and they knew he would pursue this one with equal enthusiasm. They also knew that, if the gypsies attacked and harmed him, the Austrian consul would avenge it. In Mannheim he was arrested by a Prussian constable who mistook him for one of the many insurgents hanging around town. To prevent his escape, he confiscated his personal bag and ordered him to come along to the mayor. „I refused pointblank and told him that running away was not my style. Instead, I sat down and said my breviary. The mayor came, browsed through my notebook and, returning it, asked, ‚Are you the man who treated the Austrian troops to a barrel of beer when they entered Bosnia?‘ I was. Then turning to the constable, I ordered him to replace the things he had scattered all over while rifling through my bag. He did and, passing him on my way out, I hissed at him through clenched teeth, ‚So, there you are. You have missed your reward!“‚ Another time Fr. Pfanner was molested by drunken soldiers riding on the same train with him. They were too many for him to take on alone, but on arrival he immediately lodged a complaint, and the following day the media reported the incident and offered a public apology. In 1883 on a return sea voyage to Natal, fellow passengers tried to lure some of his postulants away from the Faith and from their vocation. He dealt with the scandal by enlisting the support of the captain against the two gentlemen involved, „one guilty of proselytizing and the other of inducement to desertion.“ Fortunately, the postulants had a conversion and no one was arrested.

No, the Founder of Mariannhill never set foot in China, but spiritually he was ever present in that vast country. It was not simply the desire for faraway places which prompted Francis Pfanner to dream about China; rather, he was consumed with a passionate desire to make Christ universally known. He thought in global dimensions. „A Catholic missionary is not content if only his immediate surroundings are Catholic …. His zeal does not limit itself to the confines of his own mission station, parish, farm or mother tongue; rather, he constantly looks beyond these; his thoughts, if not his feet, carry him to the ends of the earth.“ His desire was coupled with a sense of proportion: „As long as immense China is not converted, our long pauses in the recital of the Divine Office are a crying waste of time.“ At the age of 75 he wrote to his friend Haitinger: „Actually even now we are still at the beginning, since we have only conquered the dot on the „i“ of this great continent of Africa. The immense territories of Asia still remain to be won for Christ.“ Three years later he said: „If it weren’t for the seasickness, I would still come to Europe today and let my voice be heard from the Dnieper to the Thames: ‚Hallowed be your name; your Kingdom come.“‚ However, shortly before his death he wrote, „I would gladly become seasick many times over if in that way I could save one more of the unfortunate people who do not yet know Christ.“ In this spirit he wrote his last letter on June 7, 1908, the so-called China Letter, to Mother M. Paula Emunds, newly elected superior general of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood. He was 83. Even though its proposal was impossible to implement at the time, the visionary passion which prompted it probably makes it the finest specimen of the Founder’s missionary writings. He had lost none of his bold, enterprising spirit. If at all possible, he would still march his Red Sisters into unknown territory to win the hearts of the Chinese people for Christ. However, he was all too well aware of the need for funds to undertake an expedition to China. Therefore, he advised Mother Paula to approach various influential people: „I should think that a German sister in the German colors (black, white, red) is worth a penny from the German Reich! If you fail, see the German emperor personally and say to him, ‚After I have turned, unsuccessfully, to so many German lords and ladies for traveling fare, I put my hope in Your Majesty alone. I have five hundred sisters ready to sacrifice themselves in and for China; they lack nothing except the money to make the journey, etc.“‚ The aging founder was unhappy about his inability to personally go to China. „I can do nothing with my two lame hands and feet except dictate urgent letters, raise my hands to heaven and bless all your projects.“ And: „All kinds of plans, Reverend Mother, flash across my waking eye, as I am idling away my unaccustomed spare time. What else can you expect from a mind that is still fresh?! But I do understand that these plans cannot be carried out quite as quickly as they are made. Sometimes when sleep eludes me, such visions take on gigantic proportions before my mind’s eye. Trust me; it is hard for me to believe that they are all just many miscarriages, good for nothing except to be thrown on the pyre …. The pity is that I am not thirty any longer. If I were, it would be my pleasure to go ahead of you to explore suitable sites for new missions.“ By way of a postscript the Founder added: „My health is much the same, except that lately the calcification of the arteries presses on the heart every two or three days. I know that, if it reaches the heart itself, it will cause a cardiac arrest. I say with the psalmist: ‚My heart is ready, 0 God; my heart is ready!“‚(Ps 7:8) The secretary added: „Reverend Father is so choked with tears that he can hardly pronounce these words!“ St. John Chrysostom is credited with saying that nothing is quite as cold as a Christian who does not care for the salvation of others. To lead others to Christ, as Andrew did his brother Peter, belongs to the essence of Christianity. In a more humorous vein the Founder wrote: „I regard the world as a huge milking cow, and whoever knows to milk it shall do so …. If only Christ is being preached in everything …. The vast areas of Russia, Japan, Korea and Manchuria are open to all missionaries.“ Although he did not visit any of the countries he earmarked for evangelization, Abbot Francis did do mission work spiritually in China during World War II. This is testified by Msgr. P. Inigo Koenig, SDS, former Prefect Apostolic of Shaowu. His report is a rare tribute to Abbot Francis. Konig tells of the sufferings endured by missionaries during the Japanese occupation and of the hardships of internment and/or abduction they had to undergo as foreigners. Cut off for many years from the outside world they underwent traumatic experiences that sapped their vitality. It was during this time in exile that they chanced upon a biography of Abbot Francis Pfanner. Although many died, the book passed swiftly from hand to hand and gave the survivors the strength to persevere with hope. Breaking new ground can be risky, taking a new path scary. But Abbot Francis was convinced that this is the stuff of which change and growth are made: „Despite our own need and incapacity we may not cease in our readiness to do what we can so ‚that the face of the earth may be renewed.“‚ Today pastors and priests across China report increased interest in the Christian faith among the young. Christians have gained greater freedoms by proving their value to society. While Chinese moral education focuses on a rigid understanding of values like patriotism, work ethic and self-reliance Chinese Christians are known for their‘ charitable outreach. They focus more on their faith than on politics.

In 2005 a Synod on the Eucharist was held in Rome: „The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church.“ In his opening remarks Pope Benedict said: „The Eucharist is the motor of the whole of the Church’s evangelizing action …. Only in the measure that Christian communities are ‚Eucharistic‘ can they transmit Christ to people …. The Eucharist has molded notable missionary apostles of all states of life.“ In referring to Francis Xavier and Therese of Lisieux, he could equally well have mentioned the monk-missionary Francis Pfanner, founder of Mariastern (Bosnia) and Mariannhill (South Africa), because as a „contemplative in action“ (like John Paul II) he had the fire of both-patrons of the universal missions. Mother Paula Emunds, co-foundress with Abbot Francis of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood, echoed his teaching on the Eucharist as the enactment of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Referring to the Precious Blood, she wrote: „Day and night this fountain of graces flows in the sacrifice of the Holy Mass offered on the altars all over the world. The Precious Blood is inseparably united with the mystery of the Eucharist and also with the Sacred Heart, which is the source of this flood of grace.“ She called on the sisters to commit themselves unreservedly to the Lord, giving love for love, especially in their involvement with those who did not yet know their Redeemer. Eucharist and sacrifice – for the Founder these were synonymous. While studying in Padua, he had sacrificed his ambition for engineering in order to become a priest. At his first Mass the memorial of Christ’s tremendous self-giving had so overpowered him that for a brief moment he had been unable to continue. Recalling the incident later, he wrote: „At the time of the consecration, holding the bread between my fingers and saying those hallowed words spoken by the Lord Himself, I was so overwhelmed by the significance of the sacred action that I was unable to continue. I practically choked on the words and only hoped that nobody would notice.“ As pastor of a parish in need of transformation, he soon realized that he would achieve nothing unless he himself was transformed by the consecration of the Sacred Species that he celebrated daily. He would have to participate in the divine mystery, for unless he himself was intimately united to the One who healed and united, he could not hope to shepherd people who needed healing and unity. In his ministries of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and Reconciliation of penitents, Francis Pfanner resembled his contemporary, the Cure of Ars. The Eucharist was important as a communal banquet, but it was more important for people to unite themselves with the Paschal Mystery. Emphasizing this truth for nine years, he was able to leave behind a parish restored. Thirteen years later saying Mass in Jerusalem at the altar erected over the place where Jesus had been crucified, he was again profoundly moved by Christ’s total self-giving and his own unworthiness. „Standing on the very spot where Christ shed his Precious Blood for my sake, I could not help reflecting how very little I was doing for Him. It cost Him excruciating pain to save us, and here was I, going through the liturgical action with practically no cost to myself. The thought so overwhelmed me that I could not continue for a while.“ At that moment he decided to carry out what he had resolved: to spend the remainder of his life – he suffered from an incurable lung condition – in prayer and penance for his own sins and the sins of others. By taking the vows of obedience and stability in one of the most austere Orders, he placed himself completely at God’s disposal. His health was restored and it did not take long before his leadership qualities were recognized. For most people who choose a monastic vocation it is final: they enter and die in the monastery. Not so the Trappist Francis Pfanner. At age 60 – in 1885 in South Africa – he embraced his fourth and final vocation prompted by the same Eucharistic ‚ love that had inspired the others· this time he reached out to „the many“ for whom Christ had shed His Blood. From his youth Pfanner prayed to be „closely united with God,“ a prayer that drew him to the Real Presence. Christ’s complete abandonment to the Father spoke powerfully to him. Later, Mass and the Blessed Sacrament were the sources of his missionary fervor and heroic fortitude. He made every effort to bring those entrusted to him to this source of Christian holiness. Waiving his Order’s preference for „praying in secret,“ he organized colorful Corpus Christi processions to demonstrate that Christ had really „pitched His Tent among people.“ By his own testimony he said Mass every day except when he was bedridden. In old age his eyes became dim and his hands too shaky to hold the chalice but seated in a wicker chair he still joined daily Mass, and on Sundays after a cup of herbal tea he also participated in the people’s Mass. Eucharist and Mission flow from the same source of love and are intrinsically one. On this point the Founder’s counsel, transmitted by Mother Paula, echoes the Church’s teaching. Though addressed to sisters it applies to all who love the Eucharist. „A good missionary sister will endeavor by prayer and through meditation to penetrate deeply into the mystery of the infinite love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. In this way she will get to know more deeply the inner sentiments and dispositions of the Sacred Heart, especially His fervent desire for the salvation of all, which should also move her heart.“ True to the Founder’s spiritual legacy, Mother Paula asks the sisters to meditate on these profound truths preferably at the feet of Mary, Vessel of the Eucharist and First Missionary.

On Dec 9, 1904, Abbot Francis Pfanner dedicated a new church at Emaus, his place of self-chosen exile, to St. Francis Xavier. Though living ages apart, the resemblance between him and the patron of the missions is striking. The Founder used to quote Francis Xavier when soliciting support for Mariannhill and its missions. „Two hundred years ago,“ he wrote, „fervent Xavier sent passionate appeals to Europe: ‚O you clever theologians,‘ he wrote then, ‚you brilliant speakers, you learned and flattered pastors, will you not for once rouse yourselves and make but a small effort to book a passage to India and teach these poor people of mine that there is a God in three Persons?‘ And here am I, soliciting help for Africa in the selfsame words.“ Francis Pfanner’s missionary heart embraced the whole world. „Our mission territory is the Kingdom of God,“ he told critics, and that has no boundaries.“ And: „It shall be our most fervent desire to convert the whole world, although we will never be able to do it… But even if we saved only one soul, our efforts would not have been in vain.“ Xavier was a proud Basque, passionate, fiery and autocratic, something that must also be said of Francis Pfanner. Like young Xavier, Wendelin (our Founder’s given name) loved to wrestle with his peers until he defeated them. But what people admire in both men is their big-heartedness and their generosity in the giving of themselves. Both loved with a heroic love and endured untold hardships in the service of the Gospel. Once Xavier was converted from his worldly ways, he became humble, never, for example, writing to his onetime colleague and now superior general, Ignatius, except on his knees. Abbot Francis for his part gave proof of a humble attitude by reinforcing a rule that had fallen into disuse: every Trappist, including the abbot, should once again do his own laundry. „We need to practice self-denial and humility,“ he explained, „and what better opportunity do we have than bending over the laundry tub? Mortification is necessary for the missions, for without it we forfeit God’s blessings. Let us remember that great missionaries like Francis Xavier and Peter Claver were truly humble.“ Originally Francis Xavier was to join other Jesuits in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to discern the future of their Society. But King John of Portugal wanted him in the newly opened missions in India. Similarly, Francis Pfanner was to be made abbot in 1879; instead, God called him to South Africa to spearhead the evangelization of the local people there. Xavier had no particular qualifications to offer for his assignment but simply threw himself into the task of „rescuing people from the grip of Satan.“ Pfanner for his part set out into no-man’s land and persevered by fixing his eyes on the „many thousands of souls who needed to be saved.“ Though Xavier was a great organizer and pioneer, his approach was sometimes ill-considered. Not only was his catechesis grossly insufficient, but he also enlisted the patronage of worldly powers and occasionally appealed to them for their armed protection. For his part Abbot Francis, though critical of the social, political and ecclesiastical powers that be, accepted colonial rule and never questioned British expansionist policy but used its benefits for the good of the missions. He compared his controversial action of opening more and more outposts with the activities of St. Paul, Francis Xavier, and even King David, saying that he pursued only one purpose: to obtain the „treasure in the field.“ Abbot Francis, as well as his saintly namesake, understood that missionary success depends not so much on human effort but on the grace of God. Both were convinced that God could use their services and grant people a conversion of heart, if only they united their efforts to Christ’s own sacrifice. Consequently, they detached themselves from everything that might lessen the effectiveness of their mission and chose to live a life of prayer and austerity. St. Francis Xavier ate only enough to keep alive; Abbot Francis endured extreme heat and cold and was often reduced to skin and bones by prolonged bouts of seasickness. Like Xavier who used his nights for prayer and writing letters, articles, catechetical instructions, as well as attracting converts with music and singing, Abbot Francis burned the midnight oil to attend to his vast correspondence, while he and his monks made the hills of Natal ring with sacred hymns. And: both remained joyful at heart in the midst of suffering. If the „story of Francis Xavier’s journeys is an epic of adventure,“ the same is true of the story of Abbot Francis. „A Catholic missionary…,“ he wrote, „desires that the truths he holds be held everywhere …. His zeal is not limited to the confines of his own mission station, parish, farm nor mother tongue; rather … his thoughts, if not his feet, carry him to the ends of the earth.“ He wanted the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood (his foundation) to go to Siberia, China, Korea, New Zealand, Tierra del Fuego. From his exile in Emaus he wrote, „If I decided to put my rod into Lebanon’s soil, I am sure it would sprout again – like Aaron’s.“ He quoted Francis Xavier to those who obstructed his work: „He would not have been lenient with you calculating ‚money men‘ and ‚missionaries of the interior.‘ Did St. Francis from his deathbed, or rather from his straw mat, not look towards China, because he was not satisfied with immense India, Japan and Melanesia? … Does Fr. Franz do anything that Francis Xavier did not do? Is he greedy for land or for souls?“ St. Francis Xavier was abandoned on the Island of Sancian while vainly seeking entrance into China. He died without the sacraments or a Christian burial. Abbot Francis received both but died without a priest. Upon realizing this, he exclaimed, „That also,“ meaning that he would make that last sacrifice as well. Despite the many obstacles Francis Xavier had to overcome, a local church was established in every place he visited and his labors bear fruit to the present day. The same can be said of the founder of Mariannhill.

Catholics are familiar with the phrase mysterium fidei (mystery of faith), which the celebrant pronounces at every Mass immediately after the Consecration. Mysterium Crucis – mystery of the Cross – on the other hand is a term not so well known. However, the Cross of Christ is the central mystery of the Christian faith. For the Trappist Wendelin Francis Pfanner, bearing a cross was an abiding reality. His life demonstrates what the Church teaches: „To follow Christ means to accept the intrinsic meaning of the Cross, the radical love which finds expression through it, and thus to imitate God himself, who revealed himself on the Cross as the one poured-out“ (Benedict XVI). This is a mystery because ultimately the Cross cannot be understood, only accepted and carried. Francis Pfanner’s way of the Cross began early. Four years after taking his vows at Mariawald, he was sent to found a new monastery, but after three months he was made to understand that the real motive for his appointment had been to expel him. His superior barred his return to the monastery. He had to plead his case in Rome where, waiting for the verdict, he was asked to restore the ruins of Tre Fontane. There he contracted malaria – one Brother died – and his spirit was plunged into the deepest darkness. Though he was acquitted by the Church and reinstated in the Order, he lived under a cloud the rest of his life. He described this time as living „between heaven and earth … when many gypsy families were better off than we.“ They had to wait nine months for the new parliament in Catholic Croatia to grant them residency. But in vain: their application was rejected, and Fr. Francis turned to Turkish Bosnia, where finally he was successful in acquiring land. Mariastern was founded but in what utter poverty! For three months they lived on dry beans and water and slept in a stable, but this was just the beginning. Fr. Francis had to face the intrigues of Muslim and Serb-Orthodox officials, the scheming of false brothers and the unconcealed jealousy of another religious Order who considered themselves owners of the Bosnian vineyard. As for support, Mariastern had none except the pennies from the poor for which the Brothers went around begging. Fr. Francis had to travel to Constantinople – a journey not without risk to his life- to procure a building license. For six months his faith and perseverance were put to the test: „How I suffered, sighed and struggled! Oh, how I would have rather uprooted oak trees in Mariastern!“ Afterwards holding the required document in his hands, he exclaimed, „A poor soul could not feel happier about its release from purgatory than I felt leaving Constantinople.“ The greatest cross he faced was not external obstacles but the faithlessness of his brothers. During the first severe winter, after personally supervising the construction of the new monastery, all except a few lost hope and abandoned him. The only ones to stay behind in the unfinished building were a Brother – who soon died – and a novice. Who would have continued under such circumstances? Who would still have had the fire to enkindle enthusiasm for the Trappist vocation? Only a man carved from such rugged wood as Francis Wendelin could have carried such a heavy cross. Unbroken he exclaimed „Even if all leave, I will not. Now is the time to see whether this foundation is from God or not.“ It obviously was. The runaways returned as soon as the ice melted. Other trials, however, were in store. Abbot Francis relates the tragic loss of two of his best men. The manager drowned when the monastery ferry capsized in the swollen Urbas River, while the assistant who could not swim only saved himself by catching hold of his cloak. But two years later even he died of a heart attack. „He was only 19 and the most capable man I had. After his death three men could not do what he had done alone. In terms of vigor, knowledge and the potential for priests and future leaders, the loss of these two was irreplaceable.“ In South Africa Prior Francis founded Mariannhill and became its first abbot. But only seven years later he was removed from office for trying to combine the monastic life with an active missionary outreach. He wrote to a brother on the Feast of the Finding of the Cross, „I also have found a particle of the cross. I will embrace and kiss it and allow myself to be drawn up by it to the Father in heaven.“ And to another: „God be praised that I have learned in these five months to bear my punishment while the worst is said, believed and written about me. Indeed I am glad to be thoroughly despised. If only I could endure still more of this kind of suffering for God. Meanwhile I have the hope „that my Redeemer lives“‚ (Job 19:25). It has been observed that „this most loyal son of his Order was not spared misjudgement, humiliation and correction on account of his well-nigh Pauline missionary strategy, his outstanding foresight an? epochal personal views, all truly unique and prophetic. Thank God that, as one of the really great ones in the Church, he also had the greatness to pass those trials with flying colors“ (0. Heberling, C.M.M.). The Mysterium Crucis enfolding in Francis Pfanner’s life demonstrates that just as the Gospel gains influence when the Church is despised and persecuted, so a foundation like his was consolidated by suffering. Rock solid faith and missionary fervor gave him the strength to overcome all obstacles. He even put his own shortcomings, impatience and occasional false pride to use, for „with my God I can scale any wall“ (Ps 18:29).