Siegfried Hertlein Book order

In 1963, the Territorial Abbey of Ndanda handed over their former mission territory to the newly erected Mtwara diocese. The agreement between the missionary Benedictines and leadership of the diocese stated that “the missionary priests of the Congregation of St. Ottilien are prepared to co-operate with the African clergy in the ordinary and extraordinary pastoration under the authority of the Bishop. The Missionary brothers will also continue their services for the Diocese.” This forth volume of Ndanda’s widespread history describes the transition period which started under the Abbot Bishop Victor Haelg and continued under Abbot Siegfried Hertlein.

The need for change after the Second World War culminated in the Second Vatican Council. Old pagan traditions were now to be understood as African Traditional Religion, liturgy was given a new shape, catechetical teaching had to be rethought. The local Church should be given into the hands of the local hierarchy as soon as possible, thus bringing the traditional ways of mission to an end. Within the Congregation of St. Ottilien, a genuine rethinking of life within the monastic communities took place. The juridical status of the lay bothers had to be redefined as did the task of missionaries all over the world. It was certainly a heavy burden Abbot-Bishop Victor Haelg had to shoulder until the new diocese of Mtwara was born under the leadership of the first African bishop, Maurus Libaba.

The cornerstone of Catholicism in southern Tanzania was laid by the Benedictine monks of Ndanda Abbey. This first volumn of the abbey’s history explains how the Missionary Benedictines came to establish the faith in southern Tanzania. Although threatened by wars and hindered time and again by human weaknesses, the small mission stations grew into widereaching territorial abbeys and centers of a lively Church in southern Tanzania. Their early struggles to establish the first Christian communities has blossomed into three dioceses: Mtwara, Lindi, and Tunduru-Masasi. Abbot em. Siegfried Hertlein began his missionary carrier in Tanzania in 1962. From 1976 to 2001 he was the third abbot of the Missionary Benedictine Monastery of Ndanda. Since then he has been involved in monastic formation and research into the abbey’s history.