Sudden illness took away the life of the 52-year-old Jesuit Father Hagenkold. He served as the head of the German-speaking department of the Pope’s radio station for more than ten years, and later became a general who initiated the media reform of the Holy See.
(Vatican News Network)Father Bernd Hagenkord, a Jesuit priest, was tall, handsome, and had a deep voice. People who see him for the first time often mistake him for a visitor or an actor, or an interviewee who was waiting to enter the recording studio in the corridor of the Vatican shelter before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, on the Pope’s radio station and the Vatican News Network that will be established in the future, Father Hagenkold is a know-it-all.
On the morning of July 26, 2021, illness took the life of the 52-year-old Jesuit. Many people related to him, including his family, brothers in the Jesuits, and former colleagues in the Vatican media, feel sad. Father Hagenkold was born in Hamm near Dusseldorf, Germany on October 4, 1968. In 1992, when he was 24 years old, he entered the Jesuit Order. Father Hagenkold ended his service in Rome and soon after returning to Germany, he was found to be suffering from an incurable disease.
This Jesuit came to Rome in 2009. He was passionate about journalism and assumed the responsibility of leading the German-speaking department of Vatican Radio. Father Hagenkold was ordained in Cologne, Germany in 2002. He studied philosophy, theology and journalism history in Hamburg, Munich and London. He studied Italian in Cologne and interned at the local Catholic radio station (Domradio) to lay the foundation for fulfilling the mission entrusted to him by the Jesuits in the future. During the pastoral ministry of Pope Benedict XVI, Father Hagenkold was busy between the microphone and the text, reporting on the Pope’s activities.
For more than ten years of hard work, Father Hagenkold was appreciated not only by colleagues in the German-speaking department. The people who work with him not only appreciate his professionalism, but also praise his humanity. Father Hagenkold always volunteered to be on duty during the busiest hours, such as moments of major celebrations, so that his colleagues who were parents could return home for the holidays. Father Hagenkold is also widely respected among colleagues in other language groups. In the Vatican Sanctuary, dozens of linguistic and cultural colleagues live together day and night. Even if everyone comes from a different world, everyone respects Father Hagenkold. In the Vatican radio station entrusted by the Jesuits, Father Hagenkold became the coordinator among the fellow Jesuits of the station; it was not until Pope Francis promoted the media reform of the Vatican that Father Hagenkold left this One post.
The German Jesuit knows how to strike a balance and likes to laugh at himself easily and wittily. At the same time, he has excellent mediation skills and discusses various issues that need to be resolved with clear insights. For this reason, when the Vatican media reform needed to re-integrate the structure and achieve a new balance, the new leadership invited Father Hagenkold to be the coordinator of all language groups in the news compilation department. Subsequently, in September 2019, the Jesuit bid farewell to the press in the Vatican, and the people who sent him off did not know that this farewell had become a farewell.
In the German church, Father Hagenkold embarked on a journey together. He first served as a spiritual instructor, and later was directly elected as a member of the German Catholic Church’s largest association in the spiritual field (ZdK); this association cooperates with the German Bishops’ Conference. Father Hagenkold also made time to teach journalism. However, the treatment of the disease and all the tossing people exhausted his mind and forced him to put down all this work.
Father Hagenkold carefully walked the last part of his life. However, a small piece of his heart has never left Rome. When he first arrived in Rome that year, he hung a slogan at the door of his office that read: “Free space for faith.” Today, this listing no longer exists, but it does not need to exist, because Hagenkeld This spiritual legacy left by the priest has now been engraved in the hearts of many people.
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