Francis Wendelin Pfanner – 200 Years
“We can’t run our missions without the help of women,” Abbot Francis said in 1885. He appealed to young and not so young women to come to Mariannhill and introduced the first twelve who arrived as “my helpers” to Bishop Jolivet of Natal.
German women alongside “Silent Monks” in South Africa! “I have caused a revolution,” he explained in a letter to Sr. Paula Emunds, his right hand, “and you are a daughter of that revolution.” (December 2, 1902).
This article explores aspects of the story of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood which were unheard of at the time.
When Zulu children first spied the abbot’s helpers at Mariannhill, they called them “Red Sisters,” because of the flame red skirt they wore as part of a colorful apparel which the abbot himself had designed for them in the style of women of his native Vorarlberg, Austria. Red was to remind them of the Precious Blood of Jesus which they were “to make fruitful” (Mariannhill Convent Chronicle); it would attract color-loving Zulu girls and, last but not least, distinguish them from the dark-clad wives of the Lutheran pastors in nearby New Germany before anyone could think that they, too, were the wives of the Trappists. When in 1908 Propaganda Fide banned the red habit, the founder protested from his exile in Emaus: “Why forbid it? Red is in keeping with/matches the rule I gave them! After all, I didn’t intend to found Carthusian or Trappist nuns. In fact, I did not think of a penitential order at all but a missionary congregation.” (Letter to Cardinal Gotti, September 10, 1908).
“Our mission field is the Kingdom of God and that has no boundaries,” Abbot Francis wrote in the St. Joseph’s Leaflet (No. 1, 1889), and we like to add that his imagination knew no limits either, particularly when it was a matter of carrying out the Great Mandate of the Lord. At the same time, however, he didn’t give too much thought to the requirements the Church laid down for female missionary congregations. His helpers were simply to support the Trappists in the missions and eventually replace them, so that they could return to their regular life in the monastery.
Above all, it was important to the founder that his helpers served people who did not yet know Christ: “You sisters have come here exclusively for the missions.” (Address, October 9, 1887)
What Abbot Francis envisioned was not a congregation of working sisters, as is sometimes alleged, but rather of “sisters who stay with me through thick and thin. They do not only teach school, but also work alongside their pupils in the fields.” (To Propaganda Fide, November 24, 1903) To explain what work was or supervise it was not enough, because people would only become convinced by example of the benefits of efficient work. More importantly, work, along with prayer, was by time-honored Benedictine tradition, the pillar that gave stability to a new local church – a missionary principle which would have been new to any woman engaged in evangelization in the 19th century.
It is likely that, over time, the abbot’s helpers would have formed a sort of secular institute, if the clocks of the Church had run faster and the Lord had not had other plans. For despite all their missionary enthusiasm – or because of it?! – they felt called to follow Jesus more closely. Abbot Francis: “These women came to me and expressed the wish to form a religious community” (To Propaganda Fide, November 24, 1903) and, as if he had sensed it, at the very next clothing ceremony (16 October 1887) he gave them a red habit (instead of their colorful apparel). “I changed the various requirements I had laid down for them into a rule,” even though, as he explains, “I knew absolutely nothing about the many ecclesiastical regulations for women’s congregations until last year (1907) when a relevant book by Augustine Arndt, S.J. fell into my hands.”
Even more astonishing, as early as 1887, Abbot Francis asked his helpers to elect a superior from among their own ranks and appointed Sr. Paula directress of novices. She was 21, and the superior, Sr. Theresia Moser, 22. One pauses and wonders what was more “revolutionary” – his own astounding trust or their humility to allow themselves to be assigned to these positions. The truth is that it was precisely because of his unerring eye for inner greatness that the experiment did not fail. Theresia Moser was the only child of her parents (who also offered their services to the Mariannhill Missions). In 1898, when Bishop Allgeyer of Zanzibar was recruiting Red Sisters and warning them of the deadly coastal fever, she is said to have exclaimed: “Malaria! Express train to heaven!” She was sent to Tanga and fell victim to the epidemic six months later. (Sr. Lecuniana Schweimer suffered a similar fate when she died of a tropical disease around the same time in the Congo.) Sr. Paula (Josephine Emunds), from the village of Schleiden near Aachen, had come to Mariannhill only a year earlier (1886) with no more qualifications than six years of elementary school and a 4-year course in housekeeping. She was just cleaning the stovepipe at the “sisters’ house” when Abbot Francis called for her. He did not know her. But he recognized her leadership talent at first sight and, in 1889, he also appointed her local superior and directress of postulants at the house of admission in Kirchherten, Germany. She did not disappoint him. In 1907, she was unanimously elected superior general and from then on led the congregation for 24 years. She is the co-foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood.
The founder’s recruitment campaigns for volunteers were as original as he was. One of his particularly effective slogans was: “no talent too great and none too small to serve the Lord’s kingdom.” Women from towns and countryside applied through Mariannhill’s contacts in Germany, Austria, and the USA – cooks, seamstresses, nurses, housekeepers, and teachers with professional experience. Maria Treumund (Sr. Philippine) began teaching school under a tree in Mariannhill with no more than five words of Zulu the day after the Feast of the Nativity of Mary (September 8) in 1885, traditionally the birthday of the congregation, and shortly thereafter published the first Zulu dictionary. Others rode on horseback to the sick in their homes or, as in Emaus, erected buildings from bricks they baked themselves. Abbot Francis would have also liked to have women like these as administrators of their own mission farms and workshops. Why not? In 1904, he sought to win over Sr. Paula to his plan: “If women in civilized countries can now become doctors, why can a Red Sister not be a doctor of architecture and mechanics? Women play a major role in social life, why not in the missions? ‘Woman of little faith, why did you doubt?’ [Mt 14:31]” Two years later, he dreamed of a “Day for Missionaries” to give missionaries, including religious brothers, a platform for exchanging experiences and ideas. “And why not also missionary sisters? They, too, have something to offer.” (Dictation, 1906)
As long as their founder was at the helm, the sisters were naturally part of the Mariannhill family, as he had stipulated in his guidelines for them: “They give all their physical and mental strength to the mission, while the Trappists provide for them in days of health and sickness.” Consequently, the Ölenberg Chronicle referred to his helpers as the “Red Trappistines” (in contrast to the “White Trappistines” at Ölenberg Abbey), and the people of Kirchherten welcomed them as Trappistines in 1889. However, in the long run this close familiarity with the Trappists nearly brought an end to them in 1893, when their founder was removed from office and his successor, Abbot Amandus Schölzig affiliated them to the Trappists as a third order (tertiaries), not only to give them stability but also to keep them as cheap labor. And they, feeling very much like orphans, clung to the Trappists as a last resort. They followed their monastic customs, recited grace in Latin, practiced silence and, because they assembled at least five times a day for choral prayer, they worked that much less. Therefore, not everyone was in favor. More critical observers among them saw their missionary purpose as well as their independence at risk, but they could not assert themselves. The fact that the budding community did not fall apart but emerged stronger from its identity crisis (1893-1900) is primarily due to Sr. Paula’s unwavering loyalty to the founder, her courage and her drive, despite the fact that her mediating role between the various superiors in the order and church, not to mention her own sisters in north and south, was anything but enviable.
Meanwhile, the founder’s hands were tied while in exile at Emaus, but when his second successor, Abbot Gerard Wolpert, began to re-organize his helpers according to his own designs and counter to their original purpose, he demanded their independence from the Trappists: “You are not nuns, not choir nuns, you are sisters to help in the missions. Neither are you handmaids of the Trappists, but handmaids of the Lord.” (“At the 11th Hour,” 1901). However, in case they themselves were to aim at something different than what he had intended for them, he “did not wish to be called their founder anymore, for my foundation is not simply an imitation, but something unique.” (To Abbot Obrecht. 1905) By God’s grace, Abbot Francis lived to witness the church’s approbation of the sisters’ constitutions in 1906 and their recognition as Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood (independent at least by canon law) in 1907, before he died in 1909.
Shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the congregation faced an existential crisis, caused by a lack of vocations and rising costs. The procurator general recorded: “Our assets are still worth a pair of shoes,” and a day later: “They’re still worth one shoe.” The sisters barely escaped bankruptcy, because who wanted to support sisters whose cradle stood in South Africa but who were virtually unknown in their homeland? In this crucial hour again their close ties with Mariannhill proved near-fatal. So, it was with great relief when in 1929, after almost twenty years of tough negotiations, Mother Paula finally succeeded in concluding a contract that secured their financial independence from Mariannhill, though in the eyes of some sisters, it was to the detriment of the congregation. But Mother Paula defended the separation: “Better poor but free.” The Mariannhillers themselves experienced a missionary renewal, and the sisters resumed their missionary calling with renewed vigor – despite or because of? – their dire poverty.
