BENEDICTINE ON THE TITANIC

FATHER JOSEF PERUSCHITZ, OSB, age 41, was also one of the three Catholic priests on the Titanic and was described by eyewitnesses as declining a place on the lifeboats. The Bavarian priest-monk, born in 1871, was traveling on the Titanic to take up his new position as principal of  the Benedictine high school at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota where there were many German settlers. (This community, Saint John’s Abbey, grew to be the largest Benedictine community in the world.)

Like Father Byles, Father Peruschitz had offered Mass on the morning of Sunday, April 14, only hours before the supposedly “unsinkable” ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

Prior to the crash, both men had preached sermons on humanity’s need for the spiritual “lifeboat” offered by Jesus Christ amid the dangers of the world. He gave his daily homilies in German, but must have spoken English to have been sent to the United States.

 FatherJosef was a monk of Scheyern Abbey near Munich. He was born in Bavaria in 1871 and was a student at the abbey he would one day enter in 1894.   After profession his duties included teaching mathmatics, music and sports (a well-rounded monk.)

He spent Holy Week at the Benedictine Abbey at Ramsgate (England) just before sailing on the doomed ship.  He wsa to become the principal at the Benedictine High School in Minn.

 He was well-remembered, since he had a beard and wore a soup-plate hat. He was also offered a place, and refused it, preferring rather to stay with the passengers and absolve them.

His body, like those of the other two priests, was not recovered. A memorial at his monastery in Bavaria reads: “May Joseph Peruschitz rest in peace, who on the ship Titanic piously sacrificed himself.”