Karl Pruter

Who was Karl Pruter?

Bishop Karl Hugo Prüter was an Old Catholic bishop.

Pruter was raised in the Lutheran church, and was a Congregationalist minister under the name of Hugo Rehling Pruter Sr. from 1945 to 1958. In the Congregationalist Church he was one of the leaders in the liturgical movement within the church during the late 1940s and early 1950s. He was also an opponent of the merger of the Congregational Christian Churches with the Evangelical and Reformed Church to form the United Church of Christ, begun in 1957 and concluded in 1961. As a continuing Congregationalist, he led his church and several other Midwest Congregational churches to reject the merger and form a new body, the Central Association of Congregational Christian Churches.

In the late 1960s, Pruter became involved in the Free Catholic Movement, an association that lasted until his death. Pruter's introduction to the Free Catholic Movement and Old Catholicism came in 1963, when he traveled to Europe where he met several leaders of the Old Catholic tradition. When he returned to the United States, he settled in Boston hoping to find an available church or bishop. Not finding any, he arranged with Archbishop Peter A.