80th Anniversary Year since the martyrdom of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter

 Jägerstätter commemoration with a "clear no to contempt for humanity"

Auxiliary Bishop Hofer of Salzburg at a pilgrimage of the Catholic Men's Movement in memory of beatified conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter: "Whoever follows his conscience will also bring peace today".

Linz, 21.05.2023 (KAP) A "clear no to National Socialism" and "to everything that is unjust, immoral, inhuman and barbaric" is also urgently needed today, and the commemoration of the beatified conscientious objector and martyr Franz Jägerstätter (1907-1943) can support this "no". This was underlined by Salzburg Auxiliary Bishop Hansjörg Hofer at the rally in memory of Jägerstätter in his hometown of St. Radegund (Upper Austria). "Those who follow their conscience will also bring peace today," Hofer said, referring to the wars and conflicts of the present.

The Auxiliary Bishop recalled the downright jubilant mood that prevailed at Jägerstätter's beatification on 26 October 2007 in Linz Cathedral. For a long time, Jägerstätter's decision of conscience against serving in the then German Wehrmacht had been misjudged, smiled at as naïve or criticised. With the beatification, the Church had "lifted his attitude and his path from the margins to the centre". As a farmer who led a simple life and also knew about his own mistakes, Jägerstätter was a "beatified man you could touch", said Hofer.

Here with his wife whom I once met.  

You still was Sacristan, work she took over the Franz after he left the village for prison and death.

At the same time, he had seen through the anti-divine and anti-human nature of Nazi rule like few others at the time. The monument in St. Radegund, which bears, among other things, his words "Better the hands bound than the will", is a monument to peace, Hofer said at the closing mass for the pilgrimage in the parish church of St. Radegund. Following the mass, the large Jägerstätter peace bell was rung in the forecourt of the church.

"With the power of responsibility"

The pilgrimage, which is organised annually by the Catholic Men's Movement of Austria (KMBÖ), started with a meeting of the pilgrims at Jägerstätter's former farmhouse, which is now a memorial site. Andreas Schmoller, director of the Franz and Franziska Jägerstätter Institute at the Catholic Private University of Linz, spoke on this year's motto of the pilgrimage, "With the power of responsibility". He reminded the audience of the distinction between ethics of conscience and ethics of responsibility, which goes back to the sociologist Max Weber; the former means following one's own conviction, even if it has negative consequences, and the latter is oriented towards the results and consequences of an action and, if necessary, also allows decisions against one's own conviction.

This distinction did not apply to Jägerstätter, Schmoller said, because on the one hand he had placed the concept of responsibility very high and had taken a critical view of the fact that the individual could not so simply shift his responsibility for killing in war upwards. On the other hand, Jägerstätter had talked a lot with others about it, thought about it, written about it and prayed about it in the run-up to his decision to refuse military service, and had looked carefully at the consequences and counter-arguments. Whereas today an appeal to one's conscience is often made lightly or superficially, his decision of conscience was very well considered and strongly supported by his Christian conviction.

20 May is Franz Jägerstätter's birthday, on 21 May he was baptised. 80 years ago, on 9 August 1943, he was executed in Berlin-Brandenburg. Numerous commemorative events are taking place to mark the 80th anniversary of his death. (Info: www.dioezese-linz.at/jaegerstaetter)

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