Franz Xavier Wernz

Who was Franz Xavier Wernz?

Very Rev. Franz Xavier Wernz, S.J. was the twenty-fifth Superior General of the Society of Jesus. He was born in Rottweil, Württemberg.

Father Wernz was the first of the eight children of parents with deep faith and piety. From an early age he had expressed his desire to be a Jesuit, perhaps influenced by the fact that his parish church in Rottweil had been a Jesuit church before the suppression and still retained many reminders of the Society. The paintings of many Jesuit Saints and the fact that the yearly parish mission was given by Jesuits had probably helped him to make the decision. He entered the Society on December 5, 1857, made his novitiate at Gorheim near Sigmaringen, and took his first Vows on December 8, 1859. From 1864-1868 and from 1872-1873 he was educator and teacher at Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria. He studied theology and philosophy at the Maria Laach and Aachen Abbys. When the Kulturkampf of Chancellor Bismarck expelled the Jesuits from Germany, the exiled scholastics, after a short stay at Stella Matutina, found refuge in the Jesuit College, Ditton Hall in Lancashire in England and, finally, in 1881 moved to St. Beuno's in Wales.