The Schönstatt Movement has asked those who knew its founder, the German priest Josef Kentenich (1885-1968), or who hold letters, notes, or documents of his that are not yet accessible, to make them available for historical research on his figure. It has also expressly invited the sharing of experiences that were lived as abusive or as a violation of boundaries. This is stated in a note published on Thursday, October 15, on its German website, signed by Heinrich Brehm and titled “Aufarbeitung der Causa Josef Kentenich: Offen für die Wahrheit” (The clarification of the Kentenich case: open to the truth). The founder’s cause for beatification has been suspended since 2022 due to accusations of abuse against religious sisters of his movement.
The note explains that testimonies will be collected confidentially and will not be prejudged. It provides an email address for historical research and also refers to the contact person the movement has for cases of abuse. It maintains that the investigation is in full development and far from concluded, and that it must remain open in several directions: “What weighs against him may be confirmed; likewise, it may turn out that the accusations need to be placed in another context”. It therefore asks to avoid hasty judgments, because the overall work will still take years.
According to the German Catholic agency KNA, which reports the note on katholisch.de, the movement states that the already known sources, including testimonies that implicate the founder, have been made accessible, and that their interpretation continues to be debated on essential points. Schönstatt presents itself as a movement “open to the truth” and without fear of it. Since 2021, it has published ten volumes of a study edition of documents on its own history, and an eleventh is about to be completed. Universities and internal groups from the various communities of the movement are also involved in the work.
Kentenich founded Schönstatt on October 18, 1914, in Vallendar, near Koblenz, when he sealed a “covenant of love” with the Virgin Mary in a small chapel with his seminarians. He was imprisoned in Dachau between 1942 and 1945. In 1951, following an apostolic visitation entrusted to Jesuit Sebastian Tromp, he was removed from his functions in the movement and sent to Milwaukee, in the United States, where he remained for fourteen years until 1965, when he was able to return to Germany. He died in Schönstatt in 1968. His cause for beatification was opened in 1975 in the diocese of Trier.
In July 2020, Church historian Alexandra von Teuffenbach made public the content of reports commissioned by the Vatican that attributed to Kentenich a manipulative and coercive power over the Sisters of Mary of Schönstatt, at times with a sexual component. KNA today summarizes the accusations as sexualized violence and spiritual abuse against members of that congregation. The movement responded at the time with a statement from its general president, Juan Pablo Catoggio, in which it “firmly rejected the accusation”. On May 3, 2022, the bishop of Trier, Stephan Ackermann, suspended the diocesan phase of the cause after consulting with the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. He described it as a painful step for the Schönstatt family and said that a thorough investigation of the founder’s person and work was needed; the diocese clarified that the suspension did not imply a judgment on his life.
Schönstatt is today an international movement, also present in Spain and Latin America, with consecrated communities, priests, families, and young people, and shrines that reproduce the original chapel. The call comes three days before October 18, the anniversary of the foundation. Six years after the first accusations, the movement is asking those who lived alongside their founder something they felt as abuse to also speak out.
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