STREIT, ROBERT

STREIT, ROBERT. — Born on 27 October 1875 at Fraustadt (Posen), Germany; died at Frankfurt am Main on 31 July 1930.

He entered the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1895. After being ordained a priest, in 1901 he became editor of the missionary periodical Maria Immacolata (now Monatsblätter der Oblaten) and professor at the Oblates’ theological seminary in Hünfeld. In 1924 he was summoned to Rome to arrange and catalogue the Library of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition 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 Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide.

As editor of the journal Maria Immacolata, he conceived the idea of inspiring a scientific missionary movement. Besides publishing in a few historical essays, he published in several articles, Die theologisch-wissenschaftliche Missionskunde (1909) and Die Mission in Exegese und Patrologie (1909), 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 duties and tasks of science in relation to the missions and, commissioned by the same Commission, wrote several memoranda 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 impetus of Fr. S., joined the movement and brought about the creation of the scientific missionary journal, a university chair for missionary sciences, and the academic missionary movement among students. Fr. S., however, concentrated all his energies on the compilation 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 summoned to Rome. Work on the Bibliotheca missionum, extraordinarily facilitated by the literary material collected for the Exhibition in 1925 and by the other libraries of Rome, continued at an accelerated pace. In 1927 the third volume appeared, completing the American literature; in 1928 and 1929, the fourth and fifth volumes, the first devoted to the immense Asian literature. These three volumes were published in collaboration with Fr. Giovanni Dindinger, O.M.I. After the death of Fr. S. in 1930, he, assisted by Fr. Giovanni Rommerskirchen, O. M. I., continued the work, which assumed ever greater proportions. By 1951, eight further volumes had been published. Pius XI commissioned Fr. S. to make accessible to the world the statistical material on the missions collected for the Vatican Missionary Exhibition, in drawings with explanatory texts, Die Weltmission der katholischen Kirche, Zahlen und Zeichen, which was published in 1927–28 in five languages.

Fr. S. may be called one of the principal founders and pioneers of Catholic missionary science.