The newly appointed second auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Vienna is a Salesian, Father Ludwig Schwarz, hitherto director of the Pontifical Mission-Aid Society in Austria. His appointment was made public by the Holy See in recent days. He will flank Msgr. Helmut Kratzl, the present auxiliary bishop of the diocese headed by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. Father Schwarz was born in Bratislava in Slovakia in 1940. A refugee, with his family, he moved as a young child to Austria. From 1993 to 1999 he filled the post of Inspector for Visitations at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome. “I’ve sure said Msgr. Alois Kothgasser, bishop of Innsbruck, in an off-the-cuff comment to SirEurope that he will be able to bring to Vienna a profound European sensibility, in particular, for the problem of refugees and asylum-seekers. Don Ludwig comes in fact from a very big Slovak family that was forced to seek refuge in Austria during the Communist regime. On becoming a priest, he mainly worked with young people”. Though of Slovak origin, added Cardinal Schönborn, Father Schwarz has become “a real ‘son of Vienna’”, “and at the same time a true son of don Bosco”.
