RIP: 14/07/2022 - Menzingen
Fr. Hans Ulrich Birrer was born on 10 September 1940 in Luthern, the eldest of eight children. After attending primary and secondary school in Gottschalkenberg and Fribourg / St. Michel, he completed recruit school. On 8 December 1961 he entered the novitiate of the Salvatorians in Passau. One year later he made his first profession of vows in the Society of the Divine Saviour. After studying philosophy and theology, he was ordained priest by Bishop Franziskus von Streng on 6 July 1967 in his home parish church of Luthern. He spent his first years as a priest mainly as a teacher, first as a religion teacher, then from 1971 as a language teacher for English and French at the Redemptorist College Matran, plus one and a half years at the Institut Marini, Montet. In 1968 he was appointed Captain Field Preacher of the Swiss Army. In 1985 he was catechist for a short time in the parish of St. Theres / FR; in 1987 he was parish provisor for a few months in the parish of Herz-Jesu in Winterthur. From 1989 to 2002 he lived in the parish of St. Anton/ Zurich, from where he worked as hospital chaplain for the university hospital. His last area of activity was the parish of Brother Klaus, Oberwil/Zug until he had to give up the post in 2010 due to the onset of dementia. He died at Menzingen on 14 July 2022. He was 81 years old and had been for 59 years a Salvatorian.
