Franz Pfanner

Franz Pfanner (born 1825, Langen, Vorarlberg – 24 May 1909) was an Austrian Trappist monk and founder of Mariannhill Monastery in South Africa and the Mariastern Abbey in Banja Luka, Bosnia.

Born to Francis Anton Pfanner and Anna Maria Fink, in 1825, Franz Pfanner attended high schools in Feldkirch and humanistic studies at Innsbruck. Later, he studied philosophy in Padua (1845) and theology in Brixen (1846). In 1848, he battled tuberculosis. On 27 July 1850, he was appointed parish priest at Haselstauden, near Dornbirn.

In 1859, he was appointed an Austrian army chaplain in the Italian campaign against Napoleon III, but the war was over before he could take up his appointment. After serving as confessor to the Sisters of Mercy at Agram for several years and operating a ministry in the Lepoglava prison, he went to Rome (in 1862 for the canonization of the Japanese martyrs), where he came into contact with the Trappists for the first time. Awaiting his bishop's permission to join this order, he went on a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1863. On 9 October he enters the Trappist Priory of Mariawald (Germany). He was later professed at the priory and made sub-prior He returned to Rome in 1866, where he reorganized the well-known monastery at Tre Fontane. In 1867, he set up a new Trappist monastery in Austria (Donaumonarchy). He also conceived the idea of a foundation in Turkey. In 1869, despite serious difficulties he opened the monastery of Mariastern in Bosnia, near Banja Luka, which was raised to the status of an abbey in 1879.

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