German Jesuits celebrate 150 years in Pune

PUNE: The Jesuits of the Pune province commemorated the 150th anniversary of the arrival of German Jesuits in Pune, by inaugurating a three-day seminar at the Ishvani Kendra, Wadgaonsheri road, on Monday morning.
The seminar is being attended by Jesuits from western India and from Austria, Switzerland and Germany, a part of the German Jesuit province.
Speaking to the Times of India at the Ishvani Kendra, 96-year-old Fr. Joseph Neuner, an Austrian who has been working in Pune since 1938, said that he was extremely satisfied with a lifetime of training young Jesuits in the city.
Neuner, a linguist with a mastery over Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi and Bengali, among other languages, said that it was important for young Jesuits to master English, as it is most useful in studying theology.
For Fr. Joe Uebelmesser (72), a German Jesuit from Nuernberg in Germany, the trip to Pune is "like coming home". Not surprising, considering he studied theology at the De Nobili college on the Pune-Ahmednagar road during 1960-64 and was also ordained as a priest in Pune.
Fr. Hubert Haenggi, a Zurich-based Swiss Jesuit, liberally praised his Swiss compatriots, the late Fr. Schoch and the late Fr. Alphons Oesch, both pillars of St Vincent''s high school. An expert in Hindu mythology, Haenggi teaches the subject to theology students at the Innsbruck university in Austria and the Munich university in Germany.