PARAGUAY, Marcelo Luzardi. Brother Ernesto Brandstetter belongs to the Institute of the Brothers of Mary; he is from Munich in southern Germany. During his youth, he studied carpentry, architecture, and then he entered the Schoenstatt Movement in Vallendar in 1957. In 1967, when he saw that the founding of the Institute in Brazil needed support, he traveled to Santa Maria, where he joined the Brothers who were living there while he worked in the Woma carpentry, which already belonged to the Institute. This workshop makes almost all the altars for the Schoenstatt Shrines of the world. This was where he met John Pozzobon.
He asked me for 60 more…
Brother Ernesto affectionately recalled these moments for us:
“At that time, he accompanied John Pozzobon to the Shrine every morning for Mass, and we had a good relationship. John was pushing his Rosary Campaign, and the few Pilgrim MTAs in circulation were not enough. So he asked me to make the first designed Pilgrim MTA so that it could be produced in large numbers.
I made the first three Pilgrim MTAs with great effort, and then he asked me for sixty more! This was too much for us, and I proposed that John design a simpler one with a straight roof like a little house so that it would be easier to carve.
John looked at it, he studied it, and then after a few minutes, he expressed appreciation for my effort to improve the design, but he liked the original format better.
Nothing could be done except to continue with his desire – which time demonstrated that he was right – and that was when the format that we now know was born. It is divided into seven assembled parts; it is the model that we give to all the daughter shrines that have the Campaign throughout the world.”
The more shrines there are, the better
“I remember the morning of July 26, 1985 very well; it was the day before the accident that took John’s life. We were walking to Mass at Tabor Shrine just like every morning, and I told him that we had received permission from the episcopate to build the Brothers’ Shrine in Itaara, and I asked him what he thought, because there were questions and much talk about the distance of the place and if the effort was worthwhile. John responded wisely with that brilliant simplicity that characterized him: ‘the more Shrines there are, the better.’”
I can also say that he was a person who was completely imbued by his mission, and he was committed to the Blessed Mother with total confidence. He did these innocent, but transcendental things, always thinking about helping the people get closer to Jesus and his Mother; he catechized with deeds. On one of his trips in the interior, he was tired and he asked for water at a bar on the way. He entered the place where several parishioners were drinking, and the first thing he did was to place the Blessed Mother’s picture on the bar and exclaim: ‘Good men, now we are going to pray a rosary,’ and all the parishioners accompanied him in prayer.”
Translation: Celina Garza, San Antonio, USA / Melissa Janknegt, Elgin, USA
