Fr. Richard Henkes, S.A.C., A Picture of His Life A Picture of His Life | Page 15

Branitz. This was the town where Monsignor Nathan guided the
destinies of his area, much like a bishop. In 1892, he became chaplain,
and by 1899 he was the pastor. In 1900, he began the construction of a
medical and nursing home, and in 1916 he became the Vicar General
for the Region of Katscher/Branitz.
During his time as a teacher in Katscher, Fr. Henkes was good
friends with Msgr. Nathan. The Madonna in the block chapel in
Dachau came from Nathan, having passed through strict mail/post
control by some kind of miracle. What happened within Richard
Henkes when he looked in prayer at this image of the Mother of Je-
sus? When he entrusted the blessings of the Mother of God to many
dear people, often called them in his heart by name? In such moments
of divine trust and resignation, the sharp arrow of homesickness and
the urge to freedom must have given him great pain.
During his ministry, Msgr. Nathan set goals for his work among
the Catholics of his area. He trusted in good family pastoral work
and solid retreat work, hoping to keep the ideas of national socialism
away from his Catholic communities. Pallottine Fr. Richard Henkes
was just right for this: he was a deeply convicted opponent of the Na-
tional Socialist image of the world and mankind and a blessed pastor
and preacher. He was able to reach up to 12,000 listeners through his
lectures in the retreat house in Branitz, his Lenten preaching, or the
sermons on the Silesian Annaberg. Because of this, he was viewed
as a thorn in the side of the Gestapo - undermining their authority
and efforts to dehumanize the prisoners. He himself knew that spies
wrote his sermons down as he preached, and he was not afraid to
expose these people. For example, during a sermon in Frankenstein,
Fr. Henkes stopped and handed his manuscript from the pulpit to an
apparent spy in the congregation, saying: “Here. Give it to the man
there. Then he does not need to write.”
Even before the Nazis closed the church schools in the middle of
1940, Fr. Henkes, who taught as his primary ministry, was removed
from his teaching position in order to not jeopardize the school’s exis-
tence. No longer teaching, he became even more free for sermons, lec-
tures, and retreats - work that he enjoyed enormously. And the people
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