Peter Friedhofen

Peter Friedhofen was born on 25 February 1819 in the village of Weitersburg near Koblenz in the Rhineland, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. He was the sixth of seven children in a poor rural family. His father died while Peter was still an infant, leaving his mother to support the household under severe hardship. In 1828, when Peter was nine years old, his mother also died, and the orphaned children were placed with relatives. Peter was taken in by an older brother who worked as a chimney sweep and was apprenticed to the same trade. Chimney sweeping in the nineteenth century required climbing inside narrow flues filled with soot and smoke; the work was dangerous and badly damaged the lungs. Friedhofen received only rudimentary schooling but learned to read and write. From an early age he showed marked piety, attending Mass frequently, praying the rosary, and cultivating a strong devotion to the Virgin Mary.

As a journeyman chimney sweep he traveled in the region and became known for honesty, charity, and a desire to serve God. He wished to study for the priesthood, yet his lack of formal education and of money made that path impossible. He therefore turned to unpaid care of the sick poor, visiting them in their homes. In the 1840s this work of mercy drew a small group of like-minded young men. With the support of Wilhelm Arnoldi, Bishop of Trier, Friedhofen established in 1850 a religious congregation of brothers dedicated to nursing the sick, especially the poorest. The institute took the name Brothers of Mercy of Mary Help of Christians (Barmherzige Brüder von Maria-Hilf) and placed itself under the patronage of Mary Help of Christians. The brothers combined a simple religious life of prayer and vows with practical service in private dwellings and, later, in hospitals. Friedhofen himself was never ordained; he remained a lay religious brother and the first superior of the community he had founded.

The congregation remained modest in size during his lifetime and shared the poverty of those it served. Years of inhaling soot had already weakened his respiratory system, and he developed tuberculosis. Despite failing health he continued to direct the brothers and to encourage their apostolate of mercy. He died in Koblenz on 21 December 1860 at the age of forty-one, after receiving the last sacraments.

After his death the congregation endured and gradually expanded its hospital and nursing work, first in the Diocese of Trier and subsequently in other parts of Germany and abroad. The cause of beatification was introduced in Rome. On 23 June 1985 Pope John Paul II declared Peter Friedhofen blessed, citing his heroic Christian virtue and the lasting fruit of the religious family he had begun. He has not been canonized. Blessed Peter Friedhofen is commemorated on 21 December. He stands as an example of a working man of the nineteenth-century Rhineland who, without priestly ordination, created a congregation devoted to the corporal works of mercy and to the care of the sick poor.