From Friday, 8 August to Saturday, 9 August, about a hundred participants, including representatives of Pax Christi Austria, met in St. Radegund to commemorate the eighty-second anniversary of the death of Franz Jägerstätter.

Franz Jägerstätter (1907–1943) was an Austrian farmer and conscientious objector executed for refusing to serve in Hitler’s army, later beatified by the Catholic Church.

The event started with an evening prayer in the parish church, prepared and conducted by parishioners from St Radegund. After that, there was a social evening in the garden of Gasthaus Hofbauer, the main restaurant in St Radegund.

On Saturday, there was a presentation by Erna Putz about Franz Jägerstätter on the way to his decision, where she presented a forgotten letter from a contemporary parish priest in St Radegund. The priest wrote about Jägerstätter swimming across the River Salzach, which was flooded at the time. This detail is interesting because in the Jägerstätter song, based on his words, there is the passage: “the way to the sources leads against the current”, showing there is some reality behind it.

Wolfgang Palaver, President of Pax Christi Austria, spoke on Human Rights and Democracy under Pressure – the Power of Resistance Seen from a Christian Ethics of Peace. He quoted Jaron Lanier’s warning that social media pose a threat to democracy, and stressed above all the need for truth against disinformation as there is no democracy without truth.

Photos courtesy of Pax Christi Austria