Theodor Peters: an unknown saint of the Campo Santo Teutonico

The first member of the German priesthood at Campo Santo Teutonico since its foundation 150 years ago (1876) was Theodor Peters, who turned out to be a previously unknown saint (commemoration day: 24 April).

Peters was born in Dülken in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1848. The Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints says of him:

"Theodor Peters was ordained a priest in 1873, joined the Jesuits in Rome in 1878, was trained at the college of the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide and worked as a missionary in India from 1884. He contracted leprosy and then suffered the torments of this disease with great patience from 1908 onwards in the leper colony of Kemmendine near Rangoon."

When Rector Anton de Waal was in Münster in 1875, he took Peters with him to Rome. He writes about this in his chronicle: ‘The priest Theodor Peters from the diocese of Münster came with me to Rome as rector of St. Elisabeth. After being pursued by the police for a year and two months, he finally freed his homeland from the impending danger.’

Peters was then rector of the German bakers' church of St. Elisabeth and also lived there. During this time, he wrote a pamphlet entitled ‘Three Questions of Conscience Concerning Liberal Newspapers’. It is clear that he was still deeply involved in the Kulturkampf.

In the autumn of 1876, Peters moved to Campo Santo Teutonico and became president of the journeymen's association. On 21 July 1877, he was awarded a doctorate in canon law.

On 19 June 1878, de Waal wrote in the chronicle: ‘Dr Peters, chaplain at Campo Santo for two years, left to join the Society of Jesus after serving a two-and-a-half-month prison sentence in Kleve.’

Theodor Peters's biography is the first in the book of handwritten biographies of the priestly college. It reveals that he was a pupil at the famous Episcopal Augustinian College in Gaesdonck, which de Waal himself had attended and which still exists today as an Episcopal grammar school.

This was followed by studies in theology at the Academy in Münster. In December 1872, Peters was ordained as a priest in Münster. Due to the Prussian Kulturkampf laws, he was unable to continue his pastoral work after 1875. He therefore came to Rome to study canon law.

Those who know him are surprised that Peters became a Jesuit. Perhaps he also wanted to avoid imprisonment. He had to complete his novitiate in Exaten. From there, he kept in touch with Anton de Waal by letter. After that, all traces of him disappear from the archives.

The Peters case is certainly an interesting one. In 2026, the college will celebrate its 150th anniversary with, among other things, an alumni reunion from 1 to 4 October.

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Category: Roman notes