Professor Mario Hübner Lehrer: Testimony of a Life

Mario Hübner Lehrer was born on October 22, 1925 in Nizankowice, district of Przemysl, in the province of Lemberg, known also as Lwow or Lviv). It had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, and was a multiracial, multi-cultural and multi-religious town, that today is part of the Ukraine, 3 kilometers from the Polish border. He was an Austrian at heart without undervaluing his Polish nationality, whose language he remembered, in addition to the other Slavic languages he spoke. Because he had a universal outlook, he never tried to hide his roots or the languages spoken at home (both German and Yiddish, mastering them to perfection to the day he died). He loved the German language, which he always spoke with an Austrian accent.

This profound scholar had seen the light for the first time in a pious and sincere, religious Jewish home that were Cohanim (priests). He was the oldest and favorite grandchild of his maternal grandfather, Abram Jakob Lehrer, who with varied interests was a businessman, active civilly, and a member of Nizankowice’s municipal council. This grandfather was highly educated, generous, and affable with a profound spirituality and prayer life; he was connected to the Yeshiva of Jajma Lublin, and is buried in the Jewish cemetery of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. His grandfather greatly impressed him and they retained a great love for each other until the end of their lives, both dying coincidentally on Yom Kippur.

He immigrated with his parents to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, South America, a different world from his native country, which he never forgot although he was never able to return to it. An active and grateful man, he became part of his adopted country and made Spanish his principal language. During his infancy, adolescence and youth, his restless genius pushed him to become a voracious reader of the most varied religious, political, moral and philosophical themes. He sought the Truth in all areas, including in medicine, and he became one of the pioneers in inmunohematology in Uruguay. He investigated and made scientific discoveries through self-teaching and received national and international recognition.

In his search for the Truth, he went through a period of atheism, even though he had received a very good, solid religious education, at home as well as in pious practice. He reacquainted himself with his Jewish roots later, after reading the biography of St. Paul, a decisive instrument in his conversion. Just as St. Paul, his conversion in 1950 was the fruit, not of a rationalization, nor for personal convenience, but through an infusion of faith, a gracious gift given by God, not merited but rather supernatural. After becoming Catholic, in 1954, he was the first exponent in Uruguay of the person and spirituality of the Jewish philosopher and convert to Catholicism, Edith Stein, later canonized. A Christ-centered man, very devoted to the Blessed Mother, firm and immutable in matters of faith, morals and personal convictions, personal and political philosophy, without ever contradicting his beliefs, he always kept faithful to the teaching of the Church.

Having formed a solid and happy home, based upon his faith in Divine Providence, he died in Montevideo, in his home after a long physical ailment on October 8, 2008 surrounded by his loved ones, totally serene and conscious with an image of Our Lady Mother of the Divine Providence from his native Nizankowice, in the year of St. Paul, and having close to him the special blessing that his compatriot, John Paul the II had sent him. It was, without his knowing it, the Eve of Kol Nidrei…