Joseph Stiassny

Born in Hungary in 1920 to an assimilated Jewish family, he was educated in Budapest. Joseph lost his entire family during the Shoah. Having joined the the Fathers of Sion, he moved to France where he received his theological formation and was ordained a priest.

He arrived in Jerusalem in 1947 and lived through the War of 1948 during which the State of Israel was established. Saint Peter of Sion (Ratisbonne), the home of the Fathers of Sion in Jerusalem, was situated in the center of what became Jewish West Jerusalem and it underwent a total transformation during the War. Having been a technical school for Arab boys, in the aftermath of the War, the establishment housed the orphaned children of those Jews who had been killed in the onslaught on the Gush Etzion bloc. After the War, Joseph was active working in organizations that provided relief to Christian refugees. His fluency in various languages, his juridical knowledge, his cosmopolitan experiences all contributed to his efficacy, particularly in his work for Catholic Relief Services.

Joseph’s involvement in the establishment of the Oeuvre Saint Jacques was formative for the new organization. Together with the other founders, he recognized the urgency of serving the many Catholics who found themselves in the new State. In the first decades Joseph took a leading role in the formation of the community. Well into the 1990s he was still actively involved in the work of the organization, particularly on the administrative side.

Joseph became superior of Saint Peter in Sion in 1955 as the establishment began its new orientation as a center for the study of Judaism. These developments led to the establishment of the Christian Center for Jewish Studies which received pontifical status in 1995 and was later closed down in 2001.

Joseph’s erudition and learning earned him a special place within the Church of Jerusalem and he was a frequently consulted Catholic theologian and specialist on the early Church and early Judaism. He was a founding member of the different organizations that promoted Jewish-Christian dialogue and joint learning in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, he wrote very little although one can find his brilliant chronicles of the life of the Church of Jerusalem in the review Proche Orient Chrétien.

In 2000 Joseph moved from Jerusalem to Germany for medical treatment and there he was well taken care of until he passed away in 2007.