Mr. Dr. Alexander Kraljic

Mr. Dr. Alexander Kraljic is a national director for foreign language pastoral care. There are Catholic parishes in around 30 languages ​​across Austria. According to the national directorate of Catholic foreign-language pastoral care, half a million Catholics in Austria have a migration background, with two thirds of them living in Vienna and the surrounding area. Most of the practicing believers are integrated in the German-speaking local parishes, but many migrants, especially from the first generations, are also in the communities that speak other languages. Currently, the service is celebrated there in around 30 mother tongues, whereby the premises of German-speaking parishes are usually shared. For more than 40 years, the National Directorate of Catholic Foreign-language Pastoral Care in Austria has provided an umbrella for foreign-language congregations that not only speak English, French, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish and Italian, but also, for example, Farsi, Arabic, Albanian or Mandarin and even Swahili and Vietnamese profess their faith. The common fixed point of the year is the "Sunday of the Peoples" in September. For "new Austrians", foreign-language communities are the first point of contact for questions about German courses, looking for a place to live and work permits, with which they would achieve an important integration achievement.