The Catholic Church is also busy with itself on the Easter weekend. There is a violent exchange of blows on the German reform path and – once again – anger about Cardinal Woelki.
The chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, Georg Bätzing, has rejected criticism from foreign cardinals and bishops of the current reform process of German Catholics.
The allegations triggered “disappointment,” Bätzing wrote in a letter to the Archbishop of Denver and more than 70 other pastors from the United States and other countries. “This is particularly true because here allegations are being made for which, given their weight, one might expect justifications. Unfortunately, you still owe us this.”
Bishop Bätzing, known as a reformer, pointed out to the signatories that the reason for the synodal path was the abuse scandal. Unfortunately, this is not mentioned at all in her open letter. “However, I would be very surprised if you and the signers of the open letter did not see the importance of the need to face the question of abuse as a church and to draw consequences for the church and its structures. In this context, unfortunately, it is also necessary to speak openly about power and the abuse of power in the Church, since euphemistic embellishments, as you try to do in your letter, do not really help.”
The President of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), Irme Stetter-Karp, told the “Rheinische Post” (Düsseldorf) that the current events in the Archdiocese of Cologne showed once again how urgent the desired reforms are. In Cologne you can “see like a magnifying glass that it is not responsible for going on like this”. “The situation in Cologne provides all the evidence that the time for reforms is pressing and that no, really no, delay is tolerated.”
Stetter-Karp was also critical of the fact that Pope Francis had still not decided whether Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki would remain archbishop or not. Woelki offered the Pope his resignation, but at the same time asked the faithful in the Archdiocese of Cologne for a second chance. According to Stetter-Karp, the “persistent state of limbo harms everyone, including the cardinal himself in the end”.
In a whole series of scandals and failures, it was recently revealed that the Archdiocese of Cologne had paid a total of 1.15 million euros for an over-indebted priest. A spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed that the priest owed almost 500,000 euros. The subsequent taxation, including interest, cost the Archdiocese another almost 650,000 euros. Some of the funds were taken from a special fund from which payments to victims of sexual abuse are also made. In the past, men and women who had been sexually abused by Catholic priests as children had often only received a few thousand euros.
Source: Stern
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