With his deep-set eyes and trademark fedora, Fr. ­Aloisius Gutheinz SJ is immediately recognizable as a foreigner. But he has a charming Chinese name and speaks Chinese with remarkable fluency, and he likes to refer to himself modestly with a traditional term meaning “your humble servant.” He is more of an heir to Chinese culture than many Taiwanese.

Born into a pious Catholic family of ten, at age 20 Gutheinz joined the Society of Jesus. The previous year, while still in high school, he had heard about the persecu­tion of the Church in China after the Com­munist takeover. Deeply moved, he immediately heard a call from Jesus: “Luis, go to China.” This divine calling, of which Gutheinz says, “I have never doubted it for a second in my entire existence,” completely changed his life.

Father Aloisius “Luis” Gutheinz SJ (third from left) joined the Society of Jesus when he was 20. The photo shows a young Gutheinz with some of his peers.

Practicing faith in daily life

At that time, because missionary activities were highly restricted in China, Gutheinz elected to come to Taiwan, where people are likewise mainly ethnic Chinese. He set off from the Netherlands in 1961, and after a sea voyage of five weeks, ultimately arrived at Keelung.

First Gutheinz studied Chinese at the Chabanel Language Institute in Hsinchu. Because he grew up in a small alpine town called Tannheim on the Austrian-German border, where there were many pine trees and where he especially loved cold and snowy days, his Chinese teacher gave him the name Gu Hansong, with gu meaning “valley,” han meaning “cold,” and song meaning “pine.”

Besides having a pastoral ministry at St. William Catholic Church at Losheng Sanatorium for ­decades, Gutheinz is also a religious scholar. With a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, he taught for many years at the Fu Jen Faculty of Theology and served as dean of the Graduate School of Theology. For his doctoral thesis he studied the relation­ship between the theory and practice of theology. Having dedicated his life to training succeeding generations and having overseen translation and research work, one can indeed say that he has fully integrated his faith into daily life.

Gutheinz (center) was born into a pious Roman Catholic family. Since coming to East Asia he has been far away from them physically, but their deep attachment has always given him valuable emotional support.

Taiwan is like home

When celebrating mass, Gutheinz is dignified and serious, but privately he is an optimistic, cheerful, and extremely popular elderly gentleman. If you ask this 88-year-old the secret to his health, vitality, and happiness, for him there is no doubt that everything is due to the strength he draws from his faith. This power not only arranged for him to come to a distant and un­familiar land, it also gives him great adaptability in all circum­stances.

Faced with the different dietary customs of East and West, he has always been open-minded: “The only things I don’t eat are steel and wood.” When learning Chinese, a difficult language, he relished the challenge: “Fortunately I love music, so the four tones of Man­darin weren’t that difficult for me.” Having grown up in the mountains, he has always been fond of outdoor activities, and in Taiwan he has swum in Sun Moon Lake, and has climbed Yushan (Mt. Jade) 20 times.

After being granted citizenship in Taiwan, Gutheinz humorously chose authentically Chinese names for his parents. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

The forgotten world of Losheng

Another of Gutheinz’s important contributions during his time in Taiwan has been his pastoral care of people with Hansen’s disease (leprosy).

Gutheinz first visited Losheng Sanatorium in Xin­zhuang, New Taipei City in 1975, at the invitation of the Italian priest Antonio Sacchettini. At that time there was no complete cure for Hansen’s disease (HD). Myco­bacterium leprae, the bacillus that causes the disease, is not strongly contagious, but patients infected with it can become shockingly disfigured. For this reason, along with many popular misconceptions about the illness, Losheng, where patients were housed, became a place of banishment from mainstream society.

Gutheinz, for whom “there is no fear in love,” had no reservations about entering Losheng. But when he personally saw 12 patients who were also suffering from mental illness confined in small, dark rooms in a tumbledown building, he was deeply shocked, and in a panic he came up with an excuse to “flee” back to the Faculty of Theology, where he wept and prayed.

At that time, he thought about how when his elder sister was 20, she had wanted to become a nun and go to Korea to serve HD sufferers. But just then their mother suddenly died, and she had to abandon her dream for the good of the family. “I immediately understood that Jesus had transferred my sister’s calling to me.” With an attitude of “if I don’t do it, who will?” he has worked with HD patients for the past 40-plus years.

Besides presiding over mass at the St. William Cath­olic Church at Losheng, Gutheinz also provides religious solace and guidance. To help the patients feel sincerely accepted, he unreservedly shakes hands with them, gently touches their faces, and dines with them. He also has crossed over religious boundaries, working with the Buddhist Qi Lian Jing She and the Sheng Wang Presbyterian Church in speaking on patients’ behalf to the Department of Health (now the Ministry of Health and Welfare) to seek reasonable and dignified living conditions and quality healthcare.

Their hard work has paid off. “Right now everyone has their own room—it’s better than where I live!” he says with gratification.

Gutheinz is fond of outdoor activities, and takes advantage of opportunities for travel in Taiwan. He is pictured here swimming in Sun Moon Lake.

Like an angel on earth

Mother Teresa once said that what underlies charity work is seeing the existence of Jesus in the poorest, sickest, and most forgotten. Gutheinz thinks the same way. He genuinely cares about the sick, and he precisely recalls each patient’s name, personality, and details of their interactions. He has even said that these courage­ous people who have struggled with illness all their lives are his “mentors in life,” and that he has learned from them the virtues of silence, forbearance, courage, and wisdom.

As he has grown older, Gutheinz has gradually retired from the front lines and passed the baton to the next generation. But despite his being retired, his daily schedule is just as packed as it ever was. He goes from place to place, and he even has research projects that he has been mulling over for 30 years or more waiting for him to take up his pen. He says, “I’m not busy, but I have things to do.” He makes a play on words on the Chinese character for “busy,” which is a combination of the radical for “heart” with a character for “death”: “Busy means ‘the heart dies,’ but I don’t want to die, I want to live!”

Father Luis Gutheinz, always abounding in vitality, is like an angel come down to earth. Just as he has done for Losheng Sanatorium, everywhere he goes he brings love and hope to people, as if in heaven.            

Gutheinz does not shy away from contact with Hansen’s disease sufferers, and spends a lot of time with them.

When family visited from Austria, they went with Gutheinz to call on HD patients at Losheng Sanatorium.

Gutheinz’s photo albums include many pictures taken with HD patients. He knows every individual’s name and remembers their life stories in great detail. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

Gutheinz has a lifelong passion for learning and still sets aside 15 minutes every day to practice Chinese. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

God’s love enables Gutheinz to cooperate unreservedly with groups with different religious affiliations, working together to help HD patients. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)