Diane: Hello, and welcome to this interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider. My name is Diane Montana, and we are here today to talk with His Excellency about a group of religious sisters called the Mothers of the Holy Cross. They were founded in Tanzania but have a very special apostolate in Germany, and they are in the midst of a new building project. I was blessed to come to know the sisters as Bishop Schneider, and I conducted the first interviews for our book, Christus Vincit, at the sisters’ convent in Munich while he was visiting his mother, who was in the sisters’ care. Your Excellency, welcome, and thank you for being with us. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you came to know the Mothers of the Holy Cross and your connection to them both in Germany and in Tanzania?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Thank you, Diane, for speaking with me again. We already spoke several times, and especially we did our important book interview Christus Vincit exactly in the place you mentioned in Munich, in the convent of the Mothers of the Holy Cross, African sisters from Tanzania.
I had known the sisters already in Brazil. When I was studying there in the Diocese of Anápolis, I had known their foundress. Her name was Mother Maria Stierlin. She was a German sister from Munich in Bavaria, and after the Second World War, she went to Tanzania as a Benedictine missionary sister. She went to Tanzania straight after the Second World War as a young religious sister, and she did very great work there. She was known in Tanzania for her extraordinary missionary work. She founded small hospitals in rural areas and schools, and she was very much appreciated.
She also had a good relationship with the first Tanzanian Catholic president, Julius Nyerere. He was very deeply Catholic. Mother Maria was very close to President Julius Nyerere, a very good and faithful Catholic president.
In the 1970s in Tanzania, Mother Maria felt a vocation to found a new congregation. Since she was a Benedictine missionary, she wanted to preserve more traditional observances in religious life and also to keep the traditional form of the liturgy, at least using more Latin and Gregorian chant. This was done with the approval of her bishop in Tanzania.
Later, she went to Brazil to establish a foundation there. I met her personally there, the foundress herself. She died in 2008 in Tanzania. I met her when I was a young priest, newly ordained in Brazil in 1990, so thirty-two years ago. She had founded a missionary convent in Brazil to assist poor children and to educate them in a boarding school for children with many difficulties. It was a great work in Brazil, and I was a witness to this.
The second time I encountered this congregation was when I was appointed by the Holy See about fifteen years ago as an apostolic visitator of this community. In 1990, I think two years after the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei issued by John Paul II, this community, together with the male branch called the Missionaries of the Holy Cross, was established by the Holy See as a congregation of pontifical right, with permission for the traditional liturgy, like the other Ecclesia Dei communities.
In 2015, all the Ecclesia Dei communities received an apostolic visitation. It was providential, since the Holy See did not know that I had known the foundress personally, and yet they appointed me. They could have appointed another bishop, but they appointed me.
It was a pleasure for me to visit all their houses. I visited even in Brazil, so I could return there, because their convent was not far from where I had studied in the Diocese of Anápolis. Then, of course, I visited Tanzania. They have three convents there. The main convent is in the Diocese of Singida in central Tanzania, a very poor region. They have an excellent hospital for poor people in Puma, a small village, and a boarding school for girls, a secondary school. The priests also have, about three kilometers away, a very good minor seminary for boys.
They have another station in Tanzania that is very missionary. They are working among a tribe that was only recently evangelized. Mother Maria herself started the first evangelization of this tribe. The sisters brought schools, a dispensary, and a pharmacy for the people there. The sisters still live there today without running water and without electricity. Drinking water is brought every Saturday from the main station, seventy kilometers away.
They also have another station farther north, in another diocese closer to the direction of Kilimanjaro. There, they have a small missionary station, a small hospital in a very poor area, a secondary school, a fully funded school, and a kind of orphanage for children. They do not have many orphans there, but they still care for them. In every station, they have plenty of land, so they do agriculture and produce their own food.
This is the reality in Tanzania. In Munich, as you mentioned at the beginning, they run a nursing home for elderly women. They have been doing this for at least thirty or forty years. They started there because Munich was the home city of the founder, Mother Maria Stierlin. They run it very well. My own mother spent the last five years of her life there, and I was very grateful for that. When I visited the nursing home, I saw not only professional care for the elderly women, but also a great deal of Christian love.
Diane: It was striking. It was striking when we were there to conduct the first interviews for Christopher Wendt to see the elderly women who were in their care, with the possibility of going to the traditional Mass and to Eucharistic Adoration. The whole environment was so filled with Christian love. It was quite striking.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, exactly. I saw this during my visitation, that every person, every woman, received so much attention from the sisters. They were leading the women to adoration. There is daily Eucharistic adoration in this home, in the chapel, and a very reverent Holy Mass. The Fraternity of Saint Peter provides the priest for the Holy Mass there.
These women die with the sacraments. The sisters are always at the bedside of a dying woman, praying, and the priests give the sacraments. They prepare them for heaven. This is what a Christian nursing home for elderly people should be, to prepare them to pass from this life into eternity with prayer and the sacraments. This is very rare today in Germany. Unfortunately, many nursing homes in Germany are filled with a completely secular spirit.
Diane: And in the United States as well.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, it is often spiritually cold, very technical, and impersonal. This is why it is so important that places like this exist, even though they are very few, also in Germany. The sisters are doing this apostolate there.
After my visitation in 2015, my father died, and my mother was alone. I was able to bring her to the sisters, and she was very happy to be with them. She passed away two years ago, and this was a great grace for her. She was surrounded by the sisters with prayers. I could even celebrate Mass in her room. The sisters prepared a beautiful altar in her room so that I could celebrate the last Mass before she passed away and give her Holy Communion. My mother was able to see the altar and Our Lord at the moment of her death. I am very grateful to the sisters for what they did for my mother.
Now there is a situation where they have to leave their current place because the building is very old and needs major repairs. It is about forty years old, and the cost of restructuring would be very high. They received good counsel to build a completely new house.
They cannot build in Munich because there is not enough space. They found a place in a neighboring diocese, in the Diocese of Passau. Bishop Oster gladly accepted the sisters and approved their foundation. It is in a rural area in southern Bavaria, a very nice place. They have already purchased the land for the new property.
Diane: A more rural setting will be a beautiful place, especially for the sisters and for the elderly whom they serve.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, it is a very nice setting. It is even close to a small pilgrimage chapel of Our Lady of the Sorrowful Oil from the seventeenth century, maybe only one hundred meters from the place where they will be. The plan is to build a new nursing home for the elderly women and a convent for the sisters. Between the convent and the nursing home, there will be the church.
This will not only be the church for the nursing home and for the sisters, but it will be a specific adoration church for perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. The elderly people will be able to participate in perpetual adoration as well. The sisters will also open the church to other people, parishioners and others, so they can participate in adoration. It will be a spiritual center of adoration. Of course, Holy Mass will be celebrated in the traditional form in this convent and in this church, with the approval of the bishop, which has already been given.
Diane: It will be a real light for Germany these days.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Exactly, in these very difficult times, when the so-called synodal process in Germany is moving toward apostasy and Protestantism, such a place will be a light. This new adoration church of the Mothers of the Holy Cross, the African sisters in Germany, will be a consolation for many good German Catholics. It is a small light, but God loves small lights, and He uses them to renew the Church.
The sisters want to build the church as beautifully as possible, because we must give the Lord what is most beautiful. They have already sold their property in Munich, and with this, they can build the nursing home and, largely also, the convent. However, there are no means at this time to build the adoration church. It is a very good idea to promote this effort and ask people to help financially to build the adoration church for the sisters.
I am very grateful that you are helping with this project, dear Diane, since you know the sisters personally. This is something we can do together.
Diane: Let me ask you, Your Excellency. From what I understand and know of the sisters, they have an apostolate in Germany, but that apostolate also benefits their apostolates in Tanzania and in Brazil. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, exactly. The sisters work in a nursing home in Germany, and as workers, they receive remuneration from the state. In Germany, nursing homes are supported through insurance systems that pay for the workers, including the sisters. From this remuneration that the sisters receive through the governmental insurance for nursing homes, a very important part goes to support the apostolate in Tanzania.
Diane: I imagine that goes a long way in Tanzania. Whatever income can be received through Germany must be of great benefit to their apostolates.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, a great part of the remuneration and salaries the sisters receive is transferred to Tanzania to support the apostolates there, especially the hospital, the boarding school for children, and the missionary stations, including the work among the newly evangelized tribe. They depend materially on the German foundation and on the income from the nursing home.
At the same time, in Germany, they carry out a beautiful Catholic apostolate, preserving the Catholic faith, the traditional liturgy, and especially perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. In these times in Germany, I believe it is truly worthwhile to support the sisters.
This is also a powerful witness, African sisters in Germany, and many people will want to support the building of the adoration church. At the moment, they have no means to build it. God will provide, I hope. Good Catholics who love the Catholic faith, tradition, and the missions can give what they are able. All benefactors will be remembered during the Eucharistic Adoration. This is already being done now, and it will continue once the church is built and perpetual adoration has begun.
Diane: Yes, and all the souls whom they prepare to meet the Lord, including your dear mother, will undoubtedly be interceding from heaven for them as well.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, this we can believe.
Diane: How can people who would like to help the sisters do so?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: There is a possibility to go to the website of the Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima, which is indicated below, livefatima.io slash convent. There you will find concrete information on how to transfer funds or make donations for this purpose. There are also photos and descriptions of the sisters’ convent and the plan for the church. It is a concrete way to learn more closely about what purpose you can give your help.
Diane: And for those donating from the United States, a donation made through the Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima is tax-deductible and can be given in various amounts according to people’s abilities and means. Your Excellency, is there anything you would like to add today?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, I simply want to thank you for your help, for doing this interview with me, and for helping with the website and promoting this project. May God reward you and all the listeners and viewers of this interview. I thank you for your generosity toward the sisters and this project. I invoke upon you the blessing of the Lord. May God reward even the smallest gift with His eternal blessings.
I would be very happy, God willing, when the church is finished and consecrated, to present you with a video of the church, of the consecration, and of the sisters.
Diane: And perhaps we can provide updates along the way during the building process through videos and photographs offered to our viewers.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: I also think that these donations can be used, in cases of need, for the sisters in Tanzania itself, because sometimes they have very serious needs there. The donations are primarily for the building of the new church in Germany, but they can also support, in a broader way, the apostolate of the Mothers of the Holy Cross in Tanzania, who are doing a very heroic, silent, beautiful, and truly Catholic work.
Diane: Yes. Well, thank you, Your Excellency. Thank you for being with us today. And thank you to all of our viewers. We will include a link below to the Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima website for those who wish to help. You can go to livefatima.io/convent to find more information on how you can help the Mothers of the Holy Cross and their precious missions in Germany and in Tanzania. Thank you all very much for joining us today, and God bless you.