Edinost in Dialog (Dec 2021)
Jože Vesenjak (1920–1991), an Apostle of Christian Unity and a Devoted Pastoral Worker
Abstract
We present Jože Vesenjak (August 27, 1920, Moškanjci, Parish of St. Marjeta niže Ptuja – June 23, 1991, Maribor), priest, chaplain, pastor, spiritual theologian and one of the pioneers of the ecumenical movement in Slovenia. He accepted the announcement of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council with special enthusiasm and was delighted about its first constitution on worship Sacrosanctum Concilium and other following conciliar documents, especially the Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio and also post-conciliar ecclesiastical documents on ecumenism. He proposed the establishment of the Slovenian Ecumenical Council (SES) and became its long-time secretary and for a while even the president. For many years he had edited the Ecumenical Collection Meetings, which was useful for priests in Slovenia for organizing the Week of prayer for Christian unity. He attended all nine Yugoslav interfaculty (Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade) ecumenical symposia and often reported on them, sometimes critically, in the ecumenical collection In unity. His role model for his spiritual and pastoral ecumenism was bishop Anton Martin Slomšek, who in 1851 had founded the prayer Brotherhood of St. Cyril and Methodius. Unfortunately, he did not live to see Slomšek's beatification in 1999, as he had died in 1991. He, as an ardent pastoral worker, also wrote pastoral and liturgical articles in the pastoral magazine Church in the present world. He was a member of the editorial board of two journals: the ecumenical collection In unity from 1970, and the pastoral journal The church in the present world from 1977 until his death. The article mainly presents the written and printed ecumenical as well as the pastoral legacy of Jože Vesenjak.
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