RIP: 09/02/2021 - Fribourg
Fr. Moritz Sturny was born on 24 November 1934 at Galtern, near to for Salvatorians well-known Tafers. Exactly in the village where our Founder died, Moritz did elementary school. With the wish to become a Salvatorian and priest, he went for the first part of his secondary school studies to Gottschalkenberg. The second part he finished in 1955 in Fribourg. In that same year, he joined the international novitiate at Klosterberg in Passau, where he professed his first vows as a Salvatorian on 8 December 1956. After he studied Philosophy and Theology at the Katholische Hochschule in Passau, he was ordained a priest at the marvellous baroque cathedral of the same city on the Solemnity of the Salvatorian Patrons, St. Peter and St. Paul, on 29 June 1961. A few days later, he celebrated his first Mass in his home parish Tafers. Apostolically, Fr. Moritz developed his first activities in the field of education in Drognens and Montet, as educator and director. From 1978 on, after having obtained a two-year training at the Catechetical Institute in München, he fully dived into the pastoral activity in different parishes in Germany, where he remained until 1997. Turning back to Switzerland, he continued working in the parish. From the moment that his forces started to diminish, he had to reduce his pastoral engagement. In 2017, he went to the nursing home of the Good Shepherd Sisters in Übewil/ Düdingen, near the community house at Fribourg. However, due to increasing needs and his weakening health, he was transferred to the nursing home of Maggenberg/Tafers, the place where during World War I the Salvatorian Generalate was located. Over there, Fr. Moritz died on 9 February 2021. He was 86 years old and had been for 64 years a professed member of the Society of the Divine Saviour.
