In the Liebfrauenkapelle in Ellwangen, Württemberg, believers still light candles in front of the grave of the Jesuit Philipp Jeningen.

In the Catholic communities he is called "the good Father Philip".

The 17th-century Jesuit is a firm reference point of popular Catholic piety.

This Saturday he will be beatified with a pontifical mass by the Luxembourg Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich in the Saint Vitus Basilica in Ellwangen.

Rudiger Soldt

Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.

  • Follow I follow

The Jesuit order had already applied for beatification in 1920, and in 1989 the Vatican determined the "heroic degrees of virtue" required for this;

but there was one miracle missing that could be attributed to the Jesuit missionary to the people.

About 40 years ago, the Rottenburg church court became aware of the case of a man who appeared to be terminally ill and recovered after his relatives had trusted in the intercession of Philipp Jeningen in their prayers.

A helper in times of crisis

Gebhard Fürst, the bishop of the Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese, recently published the book “Human friend and mystic” about Jeningen.

In the 17th century, after the end of the Thirty Years' War, in a time of hunger, epidemics and "external and internal neglect", people turned to the living and later to the deceased Father.

"Today it is the global crises that you are all familiar with, but also personal fates and upheavals that lead people to his grave in the Liebfrauenkapelle of the Ellwangen Basilica," says Fürst.

Jeningen was born the fourth of eleven children of a goldsmith who was also mayor and studied philosophy in Ingolstadt.

In 1663 he entered the Jesuit order, since 1654 he belonged to the Marian Congregation.

After his novitiate, Jeningen studied theology in Ingolstadt.

In 1672 he was ordained a priest in Eichstätt Cathedral.

Eight years later the order transferred him to Ellwangen.

Nothing came of Jeningen's original plan to become a missionary in India, instead he taught Greek and Latin in Mindelheim and Dillingen.

In Ellwangen and in the Virngrund - a region between Schwäbisch Hall and the Nördlinger Ries - he worked as a people's missionary.

His ascetic way of life impressed the faithful.

Jeningen died on February 8, 1704 at the age of 62 in Ellwangen.

First he was buried in the cloister of the basilica there, in 1953 his bones were transferred to the Chapel of Our Lady.