Vienna, April 16, 2023 (KAP) A deacon ordination by the Augsburg Auxiliary Bishop Florian Wörner took place on Saturday: Brother Justinus Grebowicz OP, a religious on the way to the priesthood, received the ordination in the Dominican Church in Vienna. The 28-year-old Dominican met Wörner a good six months ago on a pilgrimage tour in southern France in the footsteps of St. Dominic, according to a broadcast. A total of 20 religious will be ordained priests or deacons in Austrian religious communities in 2023.
It is the task of the deacon to “preach the word of God and thus to serve him and the people,” emphasized Wörner in his sermon. This is also in the “DNA as a Dominican”. The auxiliary bishop referred to the beginnings of the order, which had been an order of preachers from the start. “It is like the first witnesses of faith who met the risen Lord: they could not remain silent in the face of what they experienced.” In his job as a deacon, the young Dominican will have the task of preaching and “witnessing to the word of God in different places.”
Born in Sauerland, he entered the order in 2026, made his simple profession in 2018 and is studying theology at the University of Vienna. Frater Justinus made his solemn profession in 2021 and is currently doing an internship in the parish of Jedlesee. In September he moves to the Berlin Convent of St. Paul.
ordinations in May
The Dominicans’ priestly ordinations will be carried out on May 20, 2023 by their best-known representative, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, in Vienna’s Maria Rotunda Church (Dominican Church). This includes the German-born Fr. Gabriel Jordan Theis, who came to Austria in 2012 to study theology and entered the Order in 2015. The trained art historian is currently working in Düsseldorf (D) as a deacon. Fr. Simon Hacker (34) comes from a Catholic diaspora family in Schwedt/Oder (D), Brandenburg, became a Dominican in 2018 and moved to Vienna in 2019. He is also ordained a priest, as is Bavarian-born Fr. Lucas Leonhard Wieshuber (47), who was responsible for churches, religious and ideological communities in the German Federal President’s Office for a long time before entering the Order in 2018.
Students in Wien
The Viennese Dominican monastery houses the so-called studentate of the two large German-speaking Dominican provinces of Saint Albert (southern Germany and Austria) and Teutonia (northern Germany). After completing their novitiate in Worms, Germany, young Dominicans keep coming to study in Vienna in order to receive their theological training or further education. They study together at the university.
As part of the “Schola Cordis – School of Christian Spirituality” there are regular readings and lectures, but also joint prayer exercises. Ordained as a deacon or priest, they then leave the monastery again to be employed elsewhere by the leadership of the order. (Info: http://dominikaner.org)
