Romano Guardini

Vocation

German catholic priest, author, and academic. He was one of the most important figures in Catholic intellectual life in 20th-century. Guardini was born in Verona but his family moved to Mainz when he was one year old and he lived in Germany for the rest of his life. After studying chemistry in Tübingen for two semesters, and economics in Munich and Berlin for three, he discerned a vocation to the priesthood. He studied Theology in Freiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen, and was ordained priest in Mainz in 1910. He briefly worked in a pastoral position before returning to Freiburg to work on his doctorate in Theology. He received the doctorate in 1915, for a dissertation on Bonaventure. He completed his “Habilitation” in Dogmatic Theologyat the University of Bonn in 1922, again with a dissertation on Bonaventure. Throughout this period he also worked as a chaplain to the Catholic youth movement. In 1923 he was appointed to a chair in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Berlin, which he held until forced to resign by the Nazis in 1939. In the 1935 essay “Der Heiland” (The Saviour) he had openly criticized Nazi mythologizing of the person of Jesus, and emphasized the Jewishness of Jesus. From 1943 to 1945 he retired to Mooshausen, where his friend Josef Weiger had been parish priest since 1917. In 1945 Guardini was appointed professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen, and resumed lecturing on the Philosophy of Religion. Finally, in 1948, he became professor at the University of Munich, where he remained until retiring, for health reasons, in 1962. Romano Guardini died in Munich on 1 October 1968, aged 83. Link to Wikipedia biography