Prayer to Blessed Karl Leisner — priest ordained at Dachau

German priest, born in Rees (North Rhine-Westphalia) on 28 February 1915. A member of the Schoenstatt movement, he clandestinely organised groups of Catholic youth during Nazism. Ordained deacon in 1939 by Blessed Bishop Clemens August von Galen (“the Lion of Münster”), he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Dachau concentration camp in 1940. On 17 December 1944, the third Sunday of Advent Gaudete, he was secretly ordained priest within the camp by the French Bishop Gabriel Piguet, also a prisoner — the only priestly ordination ever performed in a Nazi concentration camp. He celebrated a single Mass, on 26 December. He died of the tuberculosis contracted at Dachau, in Planegg, on 12 August 1945, three months after the liberation. Beatified by St John Paul II in Berlin on 23 June 1996. The last entry of his diary reads: “Bless also, O Most High, my enemies!” (Segnet auch, Höchster, meine Feinde!). Feast: 12 August.

Lord, source of the eternal priesthood, who made Blessed Karl Leisner a priest in the midst of the horror of Dachau, so that he might offer Christ on the altar from the altar of the Cross, and even amid his persecutors asked you to bless his enemies: grant to our seminarians his courage of fidelity to the call, to priests his passion for the Holy Sacrifice, and to all who are persecuted for the Gospel the grace also to bless, with Christ crucified, those who cause them to suffer. Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Our Father. Hail Mary. Glory be.