Josef Alois Kessler

Joseph Kessler was born 12 of August 1862 in Louis (Ostrogovka) Government Samara. After he finished studies in the Saratov Seminary, he was ordained in 1889. He graduated from Roman Catholic Theological Academy in St. Petersburg with the degree of Master of Theology. In 1889 he became a vicar of a parish in Saratov, at the same time he taught in the Saratov Seminary. After that, his life entered a period of transition. He took the following positions during the next 13 years: 1892 Simferopol parish vicar, 1895 Sulz parish priest, 1899 Chişinău (today Moldova) parish priest, 1903 Saratov Seminary inspector, and in 1904 canon lawyer. He was appointed Bishop of Tiraspol on 1 April 1904 and was consecrated the 5th Bishop of Diocese of Tiraspol (Russia) on 28 October 1904 and took residence in the diocesan headquarters in Saratov. While Josef Kessler was Bishop of Tiraspol, the pastoral life of diocese became successful and vital. Bishop Kessler expanded the Seminary, founded a publishing house, supported work of male and female religious, visited all parishes of the giant diocese, and conducted 75,000 confirmations.[1]

On 14 August 1918, before the Bolsheviks captured Saratov during the Russian Civil War, Bishop Kessler fled the city on foot, and went to Odessa. When the Soviet secret police, or CHEKA, searched the Seminary, they found a message from the Bishop, where he declared the power of the Bolsheviks to be the power of Antichrist. The further message warned local Catholics that, if they cooperated in any way with Soviet power, they would be excommunicated. In response, the CHEKA conducted a Russia-wide manhunt for Bishop Kessler. The Bishop secretly left Russia for Bessarabia (today divided between Moldova and Ukraine), where he was a priest in the village of Krasne near Tarutyne. In 1921, he visited Kansas and made a trip throughouy the United States to raise funds for the famine stricken Volga German and Black Sea German farming colonies. The rest of his life was spent in the Weimar Republic, at Zinnowitz on the Baltic Sea.

Grave stone of Josef Kessler in Ornbau, Germany

He died 10 December 1933 and was buried in Ornbau, Bavaria, next to another Bishop of Tiraspol Franz Zottmann, who was born in Ornbau.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Josef Alois Kessler.

• http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bkess.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20090210053507/http://cvgs.cu-portland.edu/priests/joseph_aloysius_kessler.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20110719182412/http://cvgs.cu-portland.edu/revolution_bishop_kessler.html