PFANNER, FRANZ. - In the world Wendelin, b. 21 Sept. 1825 at Langen near Bregenz, d. at the mission station of Emmaus on 24 May 1909. Ordained priest in 1850, he was parish priest at Haselstauden, which he relinquished because of illness, and went to Agram (Croatia) as confessor to nuns. After a pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem (1863), he entered the Trappists of Mariawald (Rhineland). In 1869 he founded the monastery of Mariastern, near Banjaluka, in Bosnia, transforming it into a centre of culture and evangelization in that Muslim country.
In 1880 he set out with 31 fellow religious for the apostolic vicariate of the Cape of Good Hope, where the foundation at Dunbrody failed owing to lack of water. On 27 Nov. 1882 he went to the vicariate of Natal. On 27 Dec. 1882 Fr P. celebrated Mass for the first time at Mariannhill. From their arrival onward, the Trappists began the evangelization of the Zulu. In 1885 Mariannhill was established as an abbey; its first abbot was Fr P. From the abbey itself developed the Congregation of the Missionary Religious of Mariannhill. In the same year he founded the Congregation of the Blood (v.). Abbot P. was suspended in 1892, because of calumnies, from his abbatial functions for one year, and subsequently relinquished his office. He founded the mission station of Emmaus, where he lived as a simple missionary until his death.