"I Feel Not Worthy . . ."

All week able, earnest Monsignor Franz Jachym, 40, prayed and prepared for his ceremonial consecration as Archbishop Coadjutor of Vienna, a post which would put him next in line to Theodore Cardinal Innitzer, Austria's Roman Catholic primate. Saturday night he fasted. Sunday morning, pale and strained, he donned the robes of his new office, motored to St. Stephen's Cathedral. The eyes of high church and state dignitaries, including Cardinal Innitzer, Papal Nuncio Johann Dellepiane and Austria's Chancellor Leopold Figl, were upon him.

The choir sang Mozart's Coronation Mass. A papal letter appointing Jachym was read to begin the consecration ceremony. Seventeen ritual questions were asked. Monsignor Jachym answered firmly, "Credo--I believe," or "Volo--I am willing." As Cardinal Innitzer stood ready for the presentation of mitre, crozier and gloves, Monsignor Jachym broke into the ceremony with a dramatic announcement, first in Latin, then in German. "After meditating through the entire night," he proclaimed, "I do not feel able to undertake the bishop's office. You will, as priests, understand--I feel not worthy enough." Then, while his fellow clergymen and the congregation watched in amazed silence, the distraught monsignor, still clad in bishop's robes, hurried through a side door to his car, which was waiting with the motor running. St. Stephen's rector, Dr. Karl Dorr, followed Jachym to the car and rapped on a window. Jachym's chauffeur drove off. The monsignor went into seclusion at the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy.

Jachym's action was not without precedent; other prospective bishops had refused office, including Saints Ambrose and Gregory.* But this did not stop Catholic Vienna from buzzing with speculation. Why did the chosen prelate feel "not worthy"? Some, including the Communist press, hinted that Monsignor Jachym was not completely in sympathy with the Vatican's militant antiCommunism. There was no confirmation of this gossip. Dr. Dorr reminded Viennese of Saints Ambrose and Gregory. "Only God knows what is in the soul of such a person in such an hour," said the rector. "It's not for us to judge but to respect the judgment of conscience."

*Both later accepted. Ambrose, at 35, had not been baptized when he was sent in 374 by the Roman Emperor Valentinian to address an assembly of Christians gathered at Milan to elect a bishop. His speech impressed the meeting. A child cried out: "Ambrose--bishop," and the meeting elected him by acclamation. Gregory (not to be confused with 16 Popes of that name) first refused, then accepted, the bishopric of Sasima. Later he took over his father's duties as Bishop of Nazianzus in Asia Minor, but he never accepted formal installation in that see. In 1808 the Pope appointed Benedict Flaget, a refugee from the French Revolution, as Bishop of Bardstown, Ky. Flaget declined, went to Europe for advice, was greeted by a friend with the words: "My lord, you should be in your diocese." Flaget came back to the US., accepted the post in 1810.

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