The good priest who impressed everyone from popes to presidents
I came across him in the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, during the summer. He was a German who got stranded in Ireland during the war and then went on to become a priest.
Wunibald W Schneider was born in Pollenfeld, Bavaria, in 1907. Growing up he wished to be a priest, but in the aftermath of the World War One things were very bad in Germany and, as one of a family of 12, his parents could not afford to send him to a seminary. He became a religious brother instead.
After 13 years his order sent him to England in 1937, and he happened to be in the North on two weeks vacation when Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939. He promptly fled to Dublin and spent the next 11 years in the South.
“The good Irish people were very kind to me,” he later explained. He worked in various jobs. “I did all kinds of things,” he said. “I did cooking for a little community and nursing the sick.”
He was still a brother, but he decided to try for the priesthood again after the war, and Irish people financed his studies. He visited Germany in 1948. It was 11 years since he had last seen his family. They had lost virtually everything during the war.
“I didn’t get even one cent from my people because they didn’t have it,” he said. “So that’s why I say my people, the Irish people, they educated me. I studied in Ireland, studied my two years of philosophy, which is necessary for the Catholic priesthood, and when I finished that I went to Rome and studied my theology.”
In Rome he attended an English seminary for late vocations, as he was already in his early 40s.
“The Irish people still financed that, so no wonder that I love Ireland,” he said. “I became an Irish citizen during the time I lived in Ireland, and I even had the privilege to see my name in Irish.”
Schneider in German meant tailor in English, so he wrote his name in Irish as McAnTalúr. While studying in Rome an Irish friend advised him to seek a diocese in the US, and he wrote to William D O’Brien, the Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, who advised him to approach Bishop Robert Emmet Lucey in San Antonio. Bishop Lucey welcomed the idea of getting a German priest in Texas, as there were some large pockets of German people in his diocese.
In 1951, about 50 of the students and staff at the college went to meet the Pope. “If you ever talk to Pope Pius XII, talk in German with him, because he knows and loves German,” Schneider was advised. So, as he shook hands with the Pope, he greeted him in German.
“Oh, you speak German!,” the Pope exclaimed. It was an English college and he did not expect to find a German there, especially so soon after the war.
“How come you are in this college?” the Pope asked.
Schneider explained, and the Pope asked where he planned to go after ordination. “I’m going to Texas,” he replied.
“Oh, wunderbar!” the Pope exclaimed. “How extraordinary! Born in Germany, studying in an English college in Rome and going to Texas!”
Schneider continued: “The Pope talked to me so long that the monsignor who was guiding him around urged him to go on. But the Pope just wanted to talk to me. After the audience, we went home, and everybody almost was mad with me. They all said, ‘Schneider stole the show of the day’ because the Pope talked to me so long.”
The following year he happened to meet the Pope again, and Pius XII recognised him at once. “Are you still going to Texas?” he asked.
Fr Schneider was ordained in 1953. He went home to Bavaria to visit his family before going on to Ireland, and then travelling to Texas on an Irish passport. In 1954 he was moved to St Francis Xavier Church in Fredericksburg, which had a large German-speaking congregation. Not long after he arrived there he was told that Senator Lyndon Johnson had attended his mass.
“He lives down the street across the river, but he’s not a Catholic. But he comes sometimes to church,” Fr Schneider was told.
WHEN Johnson next came to Mass, Fr Schneider made a point of meeting him at the door afterwards. “He was nice, very friendly,” Fr Schneider said.
“I am not a Catholic but I come to your church occasionally, especially when I have friends staying with me from Washington or New York, people who are Catholic. They want to go to church, and I go with them because I want to make them feel at home. It’s better if I go with them than if I send them off on their own,” said the future president.
He developed a strong friendship with LBJ, but was not able to vote for him for vice president in 1960 because he was still an Irish citizen.
In April 1961, the first foreign dignitary to visit the vice president’s ranch was the German Chancellor, Kronrad Adenauer. He was a strict Catholic who would not hear of missing mass on Sunday, so Vice-President Johnson asked Fr Schneider to arrange a Mass on the Sunday afternoon of the chancellor’s arrival.
No mass was supposed to begin in the diocese after noon, but he gave an assurance that “no matter what happens, I’ll say mass when Adenauer comes”.
Bishop Lucey gave permission anyway. Fr Schneider rounded up some local German people to form a choir to sing German hymns at the Mass and he delivered the sermon.
“I preached in German for about an hour,” Fr Schneider said. The German Chancellor was greatly impressed and the whole visit went off so well that the LBJ ranch became a regular stop for future dignitaries visiting the US.
When Johnson became president, Fr Schneider was often invited to the White House. Johnson would even introduce him as his “best friend”.
“How come you don’t give me Holy Communion?” the president asked him over dinner at the White House one night.
“In the Catholic Church one has to be received in the Church officially, and this we haven’t done,” Fr Schneider explained. “I would be willing to if you want to.”
But Johnson never brought it up again.
Johnson’s daughter, Lucy, became a Catholic and Johnson also seriously considered doing so. These days one only seems to hear about the people whose lives were blighted by clerical paedophiles, but we should remember that the lives of way more people were enriched by the Irish clergy. Wunibald Schneider was just one of those who got his chance in Ireland.
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