The Bishop of Trier, Stephan Ackermann, in whose diocese the motherhouse of the Schönstatt Movement lies, has appointed a commission of historians to examine the new material on the founder of the Schönstatt Movement.
The commission, whose members have yet to be appointed, will examine documents concerning Fr Josef Kentenich (1885-1968), found in the recently opened Pius XII archives, as those which relate to his work. It will compare the newly found material in the Vatican archives with what is already known about Kentenich and his work and will then draw up a report on its findings.
Alexandra von Teuffenbach, a former professor of theology and church history at the Pontifical Lateran University, found substantial material on the 1951-3 Apostolic Visitation of Schönstatt ordered by the then Holy Office, now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which showed that Kentenich had been accused of abusing his power and of sexual abuse. In an article in the German Tagesposton 1 July, Teuffenbach described the documentation she had found in detail.
The Schönstatt Movement immediately rejected the abuse allegations. Kentenich had been rehabilitated and a beatification process for him had begun in 1975, it recalled.
Teuffenbach, however, stuck to her opinion. In an 8 July interview for katholisch.de, the official website of the German bishops’ conference, she pointed out that nothing had ever been published on Kentenich’s alleged rehabilitation to date as far as she knew. The documentation on the Apostolic Visitation, on the other hand, was official and very detailed.
“The letters of each religious sister who had turned to the Pope were handed to Pius XII and he had made notes in the margins. The religious sisters were taken very seriously indeed,” she underlined. The Vatican archives containing the documentation on the process of beatification for Kentenich, which was begun in 1975 at the diocesan level, was not yet available, she recalled, but it was very probable that the Schönstatt Movement had it. She appealed to the Movement to put the beatification documentation online.
“Produce the files and put them on the net. That will benefit everyone and will put the whole discussion on a new factual basis. In this way, we could help one another to unveil the truth,” she emphasised.
The Schönstatt Movement rejected an offer by the Tagespost to defend itself in the paper but a day later, on 9 July, the movement did a U-turn saying it welcomed the fact that a commission of historians had been appointed and would publish the 100,000 pages of documentation on Kentenich and on the diocesan beatification process, which has yet to be concluded.
“We are convinced that this clarification process will bring the truth into full light and thus allow for a more objective and comprehensive understanding of the person, way of acting and charism of Father Kentenich,” the international president of the Schönstatt Movement, Fr Juan Pablo Catoggio, wrote in a letter “to the Schönstatt family”.