Salzburg: Change of leadership at the Eastern Church “Andreas-Petrus-Werk”
Salzburg, November 21, 2022 (KAP) The board of directors of the “Andreas-Petrus-Werk” has recently come together in Salzburg for an extraordinary national conference, led by the national president, Archbishop Franz Lackner, and the national secretary, P. Gottfried Glassner. The reason for the war was P. Glassner’s withdrawal from his position as National Secretary and the handover of office to his designated successor, Archimandrite Michael Prohazka, which was planned for the turn of the year, as the Archdiocese of Salzburg announced in a broadcast on Monday. The conference also discussed pending questions in the management of the Eastern Church aid organization at international level.
Archbishop Lackner thanked P. Glaßner for the many years of management of the secretariat, which in 2021 is assigned from the Edith Stein House on the Mönchsberg in the relocated university building and the university center for research into the Christian East (ZECO). P. Glaßner has competently and reliably accepted the agendas of the “Andreas-Petrus-Werk” since his appointment as National Secretary by Archbishop Georg Eder in 2001, according to the Archbishop.
Glaßner has been responsible for editing the newsletter, which appears in two editions every year and is sent throughout Austria, since 1998. In total, he was responsible for 49 editions during this period. P. Glaßner belongs to the Benedictine monastery in Melk, where he has been in charge of the monastery library since 1980, among other things. From 1998 to the end he taught Hebrew and the Old Testament at the Philosophical-Theological College of the Diocese of St. Pölten.
P. Glaßner’s successor as secretary of the Eastern Church Aid Organization, Archimandrite Prohazka, is again a proven expert on orthodoxy. The former abbot of the Premonstratensian monastery in Geras and until recently vice rector of the Collegium Orientale in Eichstätt, an ecumenically oriented seminary for students from oriental churches united with the Romans, will work as a pastor in Vienna in addition to his agenda at the “Andreas-Petrus-Werk”.
Prohazka is regarded as a profound expert on the Byzantine liturgy and sees himself as a bridge builder between the churches in East and West. He is of the Latin priest as well as the Byzantine rite. He was born in Vienna in 1956 and studied any philosophy and theology in Vienna, Freiburg and Rome. In 1979 he entered the Premonstratensian Canons of Geras, where he received the religious name Karl and was ordained a priest in 1983. After working in parishes of the monastery and in the monastery itself, Prohazka took over the duties of Vice Rector at the Collegium Orientale in Eichstätt in 2004. In 2005 he was recalled to Geras and became Prior. From 2007 to 2018 he was the 57th Abbot of the monastery. He will then work again as Vice Rector of the Collegium Orientale until the end of August 2022. 2012 War Prohazka by Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III. Laham has been used as an Archimandrite.
More than 100 years of history
The beginnings of the “Andreas-Petrus Werk” go back to the 1920s. In 1921, the “Ukrainian Religious Committee” was set up in Vienna to alleviate the plight of refugees from the East, especially from the Ukraine, and to ensure their pastoral care. The relief organization soon found official recognition as a church institution of the Archdiocese of Vienna by Cardinal Friedrich Gustav Piffl (1922/23). However, the “Ukrainian Religious Committee” quickly became the “Catholica Unio” because the work – according to Catholic thinking – saw itself entirely in the service of reintegrating the Orthodox into the one Catholic mother church. “Catholica Unio” was elevated to the status of an “Union of the Holy See” in 1924 with papal approval.
Activities ceased completely during the Second World War, and the “Catholica Unio” was reestablished in Salzburg in 1951/52. Over the years it has become clear that the activities and goals of the organization can no longer be about “return ecumenism” to the Catholic Church.
The 75th anniversary of the founding of the “Catholica Unio” in 1999 was a milestone for the history of the Ostkirchenwerk in Austria, as it also received a new name with the approval of the new statutes by the spring plenary assembly of the Austrian Bishops’ Conference: “Andreas -Peter-Werk”. The name ties in with the patron saints and symbolic figures of the Western and Eastern Churches, the apostolic brothers Andrew and Peter. The plant maintains close contacts with the Salzburg section of the Pro Oriente Foundation, the Christian Orient Initiative and the Center for Research into the Christian East (ZECO). The Archbishop of Salzburg, Franz Lackner, has been the national president of the work since 2017. (Information: www.andreas-petrus-werk.at)