June 6, 2009 100th Anniversary Celebration of the Canonization of St. Clement Hofbauer, C.Ss.R. From the Editor: We are pleased to give you this special edition of SCALA reporting on the 100th anniversary celebrations of the canonization of St. Clement Mary Hofbauer in Vienna, Austria. Outside of General Chapters and Youth Congresses, it isn’t often that there is an international, worldwide gathering of Redemptorists. Vienna, Austria, Tasswitz, Czech Republic and Cracow, Poland were the scenes for such a gathering May 18th to 22nd .

Over 200 Redemptorists and lay guests from as far away as Paraguay and the United States, as well as strong Redemptorist representation from all over Northern and Eastern Europe first gathered in Vienna for three days of wonderful liturgies and celebrations.

	The first night in Vienna, after a concert and liturgy at Marienkirche in Wien-Hernals, of which Lorenz Voith, provincial of Vienna, was main celebrant, joined at the altar by Father General and Consultor General, Jacek Dembek, we went to the parish’s St. Clement’s Hall.
	There we were treated to a play in eight vignettes on the life of St. Clement written in the last century by an Austrian priest, Alois Mair-Weinberger, and performed by actors from our Redemptorist parish Marienkirche. It was obvious that the cast and crew worked many long hours and days to give us a very entertaining and informative performance on the life of St. Clement. This was followed by a Viennese barbecue and good Viennese Ottokringer.

The third day began in the morning at the beautiful Scottish Abbey Church of Vienna. Archbishop Peter Stephan Zurbriggen, Apostolic Nuncio to Austria, was a special guest. In between specially prepared presentations, a a string quartet played a variety of classical pieces and the children’s choir of the Klemens Maria Hofbauer-Gymnasium of Katzelsdorf an der Leitha brought tears to the assembly’s eyes with a rendition of “The Rose” after Dr. Otto Weiss’ fine presentation reproduced below.

There the 200 plus Redemptorists and a full church paid homage at the tomb of Clement and were led in a concelebrated liturgy by the Auxiliary Bishop of Vienna, Stephan Turnovszky, representing Cardinal Christoff Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna. The sung Mass was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Coronation Mass. After communion the (V)provincials that were present, representing the (V)provinces that trace their origins to St. Clement’s, paid tribute to our beloved saint and host Father Voith offered gifts to many of the organizers and participants. The evening concluded with a concert outside the Church and the serving of a fine dinner set up at three different locations to accommodate the crowd. On the fourth day, the pilgrimage boarded busses for Tasswitz, Czech Republic, Clement’s birthplace, for a brief stop and liturgy and then made its way to Cracow for a tour of

Enough cannot be said about the kindness and hospitality the Viennese confreres and the other northern European provinces offered to their guests. There are not sufficient words to express the gratitude of the Congregation for their efforts in making this 100th anniversary of St. Clement’s canonization a memorable and unforgettable event. For all who attended it was a reminder of the Congregation’s missionary dynamism and a re-dedication to spreading Plentiful Redemption around the world. Grace and Redemption for all! Gary Ziuraitis, C.Ss.R.

Vienna Austria
Centenniel of the canonization of St. Clement
Dr. Otto Weiss

I would like to take you on a journey through time.

Vienna 200 years ago. The date is the 20th of May, 1809. Low clouds are hanging over the town and the Danube is flooding. It is war. A week has passed since Napoleon entered the city. A bombardment began during the night of the 11th to the 12th of May. Shells crashed into the houses in the city center. Napoleon moved into Schonbrunn palace. His troops, all 90,000 of them, camped somewhat to the north of the city on the right bank of the Danube.

And exactly 200 years ago today, Napoleon begins building a bridge from Kaiserebersdorf over the main branch of the Danube into the Lobau, and from there into the area between Aspern and Essling. It is difficult building bridges there because they are constantly being washed away by the water currents. On the same day the Austrian troops prevent sections of the French army, several kilomteres upstream at Jedlesee, from crossing the river. On the 21st and 22nd of May there is the battle at Aspern. 24,000 men are killed on the Austrian side, 30,000 on the French side. Napoleon retreats back to Vienna defeated. However the celebrated victory at Aspern will be followed on the 5th and 6th of July 1809 by a bloody defeat at Wagram. Vienna will remain an occupied city until October of the same year. The Viennese churches, including the church of Maria am Gestade, will be used as mews for the horses. Viennese citizens will come to blows with French officers and be executed for it. Life in Vienna is in total disarray.

Expelled from Warsaw by Napoleon, Father Hofbauer, 56 years old at the time, had only wanted to spend a short time in the capitol of the monarchy in order to sort out some financial matters before going on either to a Redemptorist monastery in Italy or else to his confreres in Switzerland. His life’s work stood in ruins round about him: the thriving foundation in Warsaw, his much loved schools and orphanages, all of them had been closed on Napoleon’s orders. But he had no intention of giving up. He wanted to begin anew, if not in Europe, then in Canada. He had always dreamed of that.

Things turned out differently. Yet again he had been caught in the claws of the police and bureaucracy. Because he had wanted to take vestments with him from Warsaw, he was suspected of being a church thief. He had to stay in Vienna until the matter was cleared up, but by that time Napoleon was outside the gates of the city. When they had been taken, Hofbauer happened to be in the house of a befriended family in the inner city. He had moved there from his flat in the Alser suburbs as the French army approached. But a shell even hit home here.

After May 20th, 1809, after the Battle of Aspern, Hofbauer decided to stay. The wounded soldiers needed his help. Friends asked him not to leave town. They got him a position as a priest in the Italian national church, the Viennese Minorite church, and a place to stay close by. The church had attracted citizens ever since the composer Antonio Salierei directed the choir and orchestra. Few of the Viennese knew, however, that it was also the center of an extremely active Catholic lay organization, which called itself Amicizia Cristiana – the Christian Friendship. Hofbauer had been a member of this community for quite some time. Now he could use and build up on their already well-laid infrastructure as a priest; he became their spiritual director in Vienna. With their help he made contact with leading Catholic intellectuals, such as the philosopher Friedrich Schlegel and Adam Müller, and began, as Hermann Bahr was later to say, to change the town through “the impressive truth of his character. There was no external luster about him,” said Bahr, “he had no persuasive art, but nobody could withstand the inner power of his presence.”

For eleven years he could be met on the streets of the city. They were moving years. The emperor returned. Napoleon was finally beaten at Waterloo. Vienna became the center of Europe for a few years. However while the congress was meeting, discussing, haggling and dancing, and was about to change the map of Europe, Father Hofbauer was changing the hearts of the people in Vienna, even through the authorities were keeping a close eye on him and forbade him to preach. Certainly, the congress did not leave him cold. Julie Zichy, the most beautiful woman at the congress and one besieged by any number of noble dukes, was his confessant, and even the Bavarian crown prince and later king, Ludwig I, asked him for his advice. He gave whatever he could, even to the great men who were deliberating on the history of the world.

But his heart belonged to the poor in particular. Sebastian Brunner writes: “The poor were his friends. He did not say that with empty words, bur rather he witnessed to it with his whole life.” He comforted the poor in the slums of the suburbs, but not with a better afterlife. Day after day he carried pots full of soup and other foodstuffs – well-hidden under his old coat – to those sick people living further away. And yet the same man could keep company with highly educated men, with professors from the Viennese University and well-respected representatives of Viennese society, and still more, he became their advisor, their guide in the storms of their lives.

When he died, it became clear just exactly what he meant to them. Dorothea Schiegel, an exceptional woman, to whom Carola Stern dedicated a remarkable book a few years ago, expressed it in the following words: “What I have lost, what we have all lost, what I have been looking for my whole life long, is our dear, dear spiritual father. I cannot speak about it, my whole heart breaks, if I speak of the soul who I am now having to do without in this otherwise so joyless life.”

Hermann Bahr writes: “With this man the Spirit itself had appeared in the unsuspecting town. The authorities could not be prepared for that. He did not accept any prohibitions and you can’t ensnarl a man with paragraphs whose effectiveness is in the truth of his very character. They breathed a sigh of relief when he died. They could not know at the time that he had now begun to live everywhere else in the country. In the meantime Hofbauer’s disciples quietly took and held the hearts of the people and the seed he had planted thrived.”

Let us make a jump in time from 1809 to 1909. The date again is the 20th of May. St. Peter’s in Rome is filled to capacity. Among the congregation the many Austrians and Viennese are clearly recognizable. The clergy process into the Church, led by the banner with the picture of the new saint, behind whom the Viennese cathedral of St. Stephen’s is clearly visible in the background. The Viennese have every right to be proud. 424 years have passed since an Austrian was last canonized, namely the patron saint of their country, the Babenberg duke Leopold III, and the canonization of the last German speaking saint, the Capuchin Fidelis of Sigmaringen, took place 163 years ago. The new saint, or so the newspapers write, is characterized by “beautiful, laudable and great features:” There is the enormity of the work in all areas of life, there is the reputation of the written word and the potency of the press, there is the seriousness to solve the social question, there is the power of charity.” Hofbauer had been aware of this instinctively and had passed it on as his legacy to the Austrian and German Catholics as a mission right up until the present day.

Let us return to the present. 200 years after the storming of Vienna by the Napoleonic army and the Battle of Aspern, which Hofbauer experienced at close range, 100 years after his canonization, we can take stock of what has happened. So much has changed since then. The City of Vienna has grown by many times. Aspern and Essling are now parts of the city’s 23rd district. Fiakers (horse drawn carriages) still make their rounds of the city, but only to impress tourists with the glory of bygone ages. The real means of transport today are cars and airplanes. We live in a new digital age with its virtual realities. Nevertheless, much has remained unchanged: the people on the edges of society, living in poverty and sickness who would be only too glad if a Father Hofbauer would drop in on them with his wide coat and his soup pots, without any question of whether they are Christian and Catholic. What else has remained are the questions that people still ask about the meaning of life, the questions of those who long to hear an answer such as the one Hofbauer used to give “by the truth of his very character.”

I think that Hofbauer is still a modern saint, indeed perhaps nowadays more than ever before. The legacy about which Martin Spahn spoke is still relevant. We look up to him today. This is a good thing to do. However it is more important that we should learn to see with his eyes and with his heart, and to be there like him for the people on the edges of society, not with empty words, but with the “deeds of our lives”. And something else that we should learn from him is not to lose heart in difficult times despite everything because we know – just as he did – that it is God who directs everything.

Vienna, Austria
Centenniel of the canonization of St. Clement Hofbauer
A letter to St. Clement
Hans Schermann, C.Ss.R.

In the next few days a lot will be said about Clemens Hofbauer. I would like to choose a different perspective, and not speak “about” him, but rather “ to” him, personally. I am taking it for granted that the one whom we are celebrating is indeed with us here now in any case, and can see and hear us. I am addressing him, therefore, directly. Most honorable Vicar General Father Clement Mary Hofbauer! It is my honor today to be able to address you here in Vienna with a few very warm words. I am not really the proper man to be doing so. I’m from beyond the pale, a newcomer. But then, so were you, so we’re actually in the same boat! And between the two of us, what would Vienna be like without its immigrants, its newcomers? I just want to thank you, quite simply, for your life and work in our city. What you did in the rest of Europe I am sure somebody else will honor in due course.

Many years later you expressed your opinion about the professors at the University in a letter. You won’t be able to remember it, but on August 19, 1800 – when you were living in Warsaw and no longer in Vienna – you wrote to Father General Blasucci as follows: “I have never seen the clergy held in such honor as in Vienna…. Although for more than 30 years, already in the reign of Maria Theresa, many Chairs at the University were in the hands of professors who were hostile to Christianity and Vienna can almost be called the nest from which many enemies of the Christian faith, especially in the time of Emperor Joseph, have hatched. I have nevertheless never seen as much piety and devotion as there.”

These last words make the breast of every Catholic in Vienna swell with pride, and you must allow me to smile a little at this praise of the Viennese. I have a faint suspicion that you are doing the same.

You turned your back on Vienna then: you went to Rome and entered the Redemptorist order there. But hardly a year later, in 1786, you were back here again with an important task: founding a house for the order in Vienna; a hopeless enterprise bearing in mind the political climate at the time. Were you not aware of that? Your arrival in Vienna with your friends did not go unnoticed at the time, 1786. Marcus Antonius Wittola wrote about it in the Viennese church paper in an extremely disparaging way: the Jesuits were coming! You wrote him a long letter from Warsaw enlightening him about the facts. He then published this along with his cynical comments in his church paper. Enlightening the enlightened is simply impossible.

As the foundation of a monastery in Vienna was not possible, you went to other parts of Europe and performed great things there; in particular in Warsaw, in Switzerland and in Southern Germany. But you often travelled through Vienna during these years and you made many good friends here – and some good enemies too! And Vienna was your refuge when you and your brothers were expelled from Warsaw in 1808. Our city gave you a really good reception then. You arrived here after being released from your imprisonment in Küstrin, deeply saddened because of the destruction of your life’s work in Warsaw, humiliated, at a loss. And the Viennese police arrested you again purely as a matter of caution, you understand, because you had some vestments in your luggage, and the chances were that you were a church thief. The matter was cleared up after a few days and you were released from prison again. I would like to apologize officially for the mistake the police made then! However, I would like to express my thanks and my appreciation for your kindness in keeping high ranking civil servants and the police in full employment. By shadowing you to your meetings with students and professors of the University, the gentlemen of the secret police kindly took great interest in your sermons. Indeed, we are indebted to them for a number of interesting details about your sermons: “Hofbauer has a quite alarming entourage,” one of them puts on file. And you are said to have preached “dogmatically” – do you know what that means “dogmatically”? The Gestapo agent probably didn’t know himself. And you are supposed to have spoken in an extremely vulgar manner, for example, it says that you are supposed to have said: “I want to give you a sermon today, which is so simple that every child and even the most stupid of you could understand it.” Thank you for thinking about the most stupid among us!

The Gestapo folks had lots more to say about you, for instance that you were highly respected by the archbishop of Vienna, Sigismund Duke Hohenwart, and that you dined with him nearly every week. I wonder whether we should believe all that the gentlemen from the police wrote about you without a large “pinch of salt”.

By the way, you didn’t only keep the authorities and the police in Vienna busy, but in the whole of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and further afield still. We have documents about you – some in favor of you and some against you – in the archives of half of Europe: in Warsaw and Paris, in Dresden and Lemberg, in Berlin and Rome, in Krakow and Freibug, and in Vienna of course, and in other towns as well. Which other saint has kept so many authorities and governments on their toes – including Napoleon! We are amazed how you managed to achieve all this!

But back to Vienna. It matters a lot to me to be able to thank you for your immense pastoral mission in our city. When you came to Vienna in 1808 as a refugee, you did not let your head hang low, but began anew with incredible energy and élan despite being by no means a young whippersnapper at the age of nearly 60. You were father confessor to the Ursuline sisters – that was your official task. But apart from that you did many other things as well. You managed to attract young people, students from the University, and professors too. You strengthened their faith and helped them to see the Gospel with new eyes. Not a few of them later entered into our order. You did a lot of good among the poor in Vienna: the beggars and the immigrants who were living in destitution in the suburbs of Vienna, such as here, for example in Hernals, and for the penniless artists and students and for those in despair of every kind. Amazing tales about such things have been passed down to us about you. And yet you frequented the best circles of our city and went in and out of the homes of people such as Friedrich Schlegel, the great German Romanticist and the famous Count Franz von Szechenyi. We are amazed that all this was possible for you, the little peasant boy and baker’s apprentice from Tasswitz who had learned nothing, as you yourself once said. Ok, you had learned a few things in the meantime and you knew even more from your wide experience. But still the fact that you could be a sought-after conversationalist in such circles as these, is quite astounding!

I would like to express my gratitude that you put so much effort into providing your – our – order with a home here in Vienna. You never gave up on that. Even good friends of yours shook their heads at your – in their opinion – excessive zeal. Your admirer and eccentric friend Zacharias Werner said more than once: “Father Hofbauer would be a perfect saint if he didn’t almost exclusively think – whatever else he’s supposed to be doing – about the foundation and furtherance of his mission houses.” We cannot imagine today how many meetings were necessary to gain the recognition of the Redemptorists in Vienna, what diplomacy was necessary and how much maneuvering was unavoidable. You had closed your eyes for the last time before your attempts at gaining recognition for the Redemptorists in Austria were successful. And yet you had paved the way for the order to find a firm foothold in our city and from here to be able to expand to over half of the world. That is and remains a page of glory in the story of your life.

It was in Vienna too, that you closed your eyes and died, on March 15, 1820. I can’t thank you for that because we die wherever death catches up with us. But it was a close call. You could well have not died in Vienna, and goodness only knows where you would have died then!

The problem was that in 1818 you had had an extremely embarrassing house search as a result of which the authorities realized that you belonged to a religious order which also existed outside the Austrian monarchy, something which was considered to be outrageous and intolerable at that point in time for reasons of national security. You were given the choice between leaving the order or leaving Vienna. You replied to the gentlemen of the investigating commission: “If that is the case, then Vienna!” My compliments, Father Hofbauer! It was only the highest intervention by the Pope and then by the Emperor that prevented you from dying elsewhere. What a grace! Not for you, I suppose, but for Vienna.

	Most honorable Vicar General Father Clement Mary Hofbauer! You were canonized a hundred years ago. And a few years later, on January 14, 1914, you were declared patron saint of the City of Vienna. So many terrible things have since happened in our country, in our Europe, in our world such as have never been seen before. We begin to despair and we cannot lay the question to rest who really has the say in world history, our Christ Jesus, who we call Lord of the world and of history, or his arch-enemy. We are not sure that the same could not happen in the future, either. You will understand therefore that your being named patron saint of the City of Vienna is not only an honorary title for you. We understand your

That is what I wanted to say to you today. I hope that you will take my clumsy words the way I meant them: as an expression of admiration and deepest respect for you, a sign of gratitude and appreciation and proof of our trust in you for our future.

This, my dear honored guests, is what I wanted to say to our – here present and much celebrated – Father Clement Mary Hofbauer.

Vienna, Austria
Marienkirche, Wien-Hernals
Homily Extract
Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R.

My dear confreres, dear brothers and sisters in Christ: I am happy to offer a brief reflection during the Eucharistic celebration that commemorates the centenary of the canonization of St. Clement Maria Hofbauer.... ...To recall the canonization of a saint invites each of us to think about the possibility of holiness. What does Jesus mean when he encourages his disciples to be holy, even “perfect…as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5, 48)? Can the life of Saint Clement speak to us today about what holiness means, or should we consider him to be a work of art to be admired but not imitated, since his world is so different from ours? ...Humanly speaking, all of his efforts to extend his beloved Congregation failed. The great pastoral center he established at St. Benno’s in Warsaw was swept away by the Grande Armée of Napoleon. So many of his projects and pastoral ambitions in Vienna were frustrated by imperial bureaucracy and the machinations of his opponents. Yet, even as an old man, Clement continued to dream, to propose, to invite. Towards the end of his life, he wrote that he could not refuse new and tiring labors, despite his advanced age.

...It was not naïve optimism or a denial of reality that helped Clement to persevere. God was the origin of his mission and in a true sense, its guarantor. Without ever forgetting the urgency of his mission, he trusted the real fruits would come later. One missionary plants, another reaps, but it is God who gives the growth, the same God “who so loved the world”. Despite the apparent failure of much of his work, we might well imagine St. Clement anticipating the nightly prayer attributed to Pope John XXIII: “Dear Lord, it is your Church. I am going to sleep!” As Benedict XVI teaches: “he who has hope, lives differently; the one who hopes has been given the gift of new life” (Spes Salvi, 2). As we continue this Eucharist, let us give thanks for the gift of Saint Clement Maria Hofbauer. He shows us that holiness is a gift and a task for everyone. His life is a lesson of hope, even in the face of apparent failure. He challenges each of us, especially his confreres, not to be ashamed of the Gospel but to preach it in new ways, since it is “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Rom. 1, 16).