RIP: 11/05/2020 - Lubumbashi
Fr. Paulus Wey was born on 28 April 1938 in the village of Mauensee, in the neighbourhood of Geuensee in Switzerland. He was sent to Passau in Germany for his Novitiate, which he ended by professing his first vows on 8 December 1959. He continued living in the international formation community of Passau while doing his studies of Philosophy and Theology. The period of his initial formation was concluded by his ordination to the priesthood in the village of Hochdorf, near Luzern in Switzerland on 28 June 1964. After a period of preparation at the Medical Mission Institute in Würzburg, (which was founded in 1922 by our confrere Fr. Christophorus Becker on behalf of the German Missionary Orders and Institutes), in 1966 Father Paul was sent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he would remain for the rest of his life, during 53 years. The main part of his apostolic life he worked with the poor in the remotest areas of this Salvatorian Mission. Over there he built, according to the lists that were found in the archives, more than 300 chapels and churches. After having retired because of health reasons, he opted explicitly not to return to his home unit, in Switzerland, but he preferred to stay in his beloved Congo to die among the people he had served for so many years. He died at the Don Bosco Hospital in Lubumbashi on 11 May 2020.
