Obituary for Joachim Piepke SVD (November 10, 1943–February 24, 2024)

Divine Word Missionary Joachim Piepke passed away peacefully, but entirely unexpectedly, in his room on February 24, 2024, at the age of 80.He had still been working on that Saturday morning and took a short break before lunch in his room, but instead was called to the Lord's banquet.Joachim Piepke was born in Danzig (now Poland) as the eldest of three children.The family had to abandon the devastated city in 1945 and found refuge in Freiburg, Germany.Joachim joined the Divine Word Missionaries (SVD) in 1962.After ordination in 1970 he was sent on his mission assignment to Brazil where he worked, first in the formation programme for aspiring SVD missionaries and soon expanded into the field of theological formation.He belonged to the founders of ITESP (Instituto Teológico São Paulo), an initiative of several religious congregations for the formation of their theology students there.He served as ITESP's director from 1978 to 1980.That year he went to Rome (Italy) to pursue doctoral studies at the Gregorian University which he concluded "summa cum laude" in 1983 with a thesis on the people of God, published in German in 1985 (Die Kirche auf dem Weg zum Menschen.Die Volk-Gottes-Ekklesiologie in der Kirche Brasiliens) and in Portuguese in 1989 (A Igreja voltada para o homen: eclesiologia do povo de Deus no Brasil).However, he did not return to Brazil but was invited to collaborate in the Anthropos Institute and to teach dogmatics at the SVD Philosophical-Theological Faculty (PTH) at Sankt Augustin (Germany).