STREIT, ROBERT. - Born on Oct. 27, 1875 at Fraustadt (Posen), in Germany, died at Frankfurt am Main on July 31, 1930.
He entered the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1895. Ordained a priest, in 1901 he was editor of the missionary periodical Maria Immacolata (now Monatsblätter der Oblaten) and professor at the theological studentate of the Oblates at Hünfeld. In 1924 he was called to Rome to arrange and catalog the Library of the Vatican Missionary Exposition of the Holy Year 1925, and in 1926 he became director of the Pontifical Missionary Library, which he himself arranged in the Palace of the S. Congregation of Propaganda Fide.
As editor of the journal Maria Immacolata he conceived the idea of arousing a scientific missionary movement. Besides some historical essays, in certain articles Die theologisch-wissenschaftliche Missionskunde (1909) and Die Mission in Exegese und Patrologie (1909) he published his first attempts at a scientific treatment of missionary questions. At the Congress of German Catholics in Breslau (1909) a permanent missionary Commission was appointed. At its first session in Berlin in 1910 Fr. S. read a report on the Dower and tasks of science toward the missions and, commissioned by the same Commission, wrote several memorials on the state of historiography, on the need for a universal missionary bibliography, which he had already conceived, and for a scientific missionary journal. Meanwhile Prof. Schmidlin, under the impulse of Fr. S., entered the movement and brought about the scientific missionary journal, the creation of a university chair for missionary sciences and of the academic missionary movement among students. Fr. S., on the other hand, concentrated all his energies on the publication of an extensive missionary bibliography. In 1916 the first volume of the Bibliotheca missionum, of a general nature, was published. In 1924 the second volume followed, on the first centuries of American literature. In the meantime he was called to Rome. The work of the Bibliotheca missionum, extraordinarily facilitated amid the literary material collected for the Exposition in 1925 and in the other libraries of Rome, continued at an accelerated pace. In 1927 came the third volume, completing the American literature; in 1928 and 1929 the fourth and fifth volumes, the first on the immense Asian literature. These three volumes were published in collaboration with Fr. Giovanni Dindinger, O.M.I. The latter, after Fr. S.'s death in 1930, continued, assisted by Fr. Giovanni Rommerskirchen O.M.I., the work, which took on ever greater proportions. Up to 1951 eight further volumes were published. Pius XI charged Fr. S. with making accessible to the world the statistical material of the missions collected for the Vatican Missionary Exposition, in drawings with explanatory texts Die Weltmission der katholischen Kirche, Zahlen und Zeichen, which was published in 1927-28 in five languages.
Fr. S. can be called one of the principal initiators and pioneers of Catholic missionary science.
Bibliography3 works
Giovanni Rommerskirchen