The Archdiocese of Bamberg needs a new head shepherd. Archbishop Ludwig Schick retires. Pope Francis accepts his resignation – that comes as a surprise to observers.
Places of pilgrimage, says Ludwig Schick on Allerheiligen, could be “sources of confidence and departure”, “of active activity and committed commitment to a better future”.
He says that on the morning of the Christian holiday in the Lower Rhine pilgrimage town of Kevelaer. What hardly anyone knew at the time: Schick is no longer Archbishop of Bamberg from that day on. A few hours after this sermon on new beginnings, the Vatican announced on Tuesday that Pope Francis had accepted the 73-year-old’s resignation.
“After careful consideration and prayer, as well as many conversations with my spiritual guide,” Schick wrote in a letter to the faithful in his archdiocese that he had already decided in the spring to ask the pope to be relieved of his duties after 20 years in office.
Schick: “I have fulfilled my tasks”
With his resignation, he wants to leave upcoming important decisions and course setting to a younger successor. “I have fulfilled and completed my duties in the archdiocese,” says the letter, which was published on the archdiocese’s website on Tuesday. “From autumn 2022 there will be new decisions and projects that will far exceed the two years until my 75th birthday.”
In general, bishops offer their resignation to the head of the Catholic Church after the age of 75, but Schick already offered his resignation to Pope Francis at a private audience in April of this year. His departure comes as a surprise to some observers – including canon lawyer Thomas Schüller. “I’m honestly surprised by his resignation at the age of 73, because he didn’t give me the impression that he was tired of office,” he told the German Press Agency. “With Ludwig Schick, the Archdiocese of Bamberg, but also the German Bishops’ Conference, will lose a support and a truly devoted bishop.”
“Pope Francis listened to my arguments and considered them. In between, he also asked that I remain in office,” writes Schick. “After repeating my reasons, he complied with my request at the end of September.” From All Saints’ Day he was “no longer in the office of Archbishop of Bamberg, but in service”.
Fundamental church reforms are a mammoth task
As examples of the decisions that his successor now has to make, Schick cites personnel decisions about new cathedral canons and main department heads. The real mammoth task, however, are the fundamental church reforms that are currently being discussed. “The implementation of the resolutions of the synodal path and the synodal process will be pending,” writes Schick – and that without him.
Schick, who was born in Marburg in 1949 and became Archbishop of Bamberg in 2002, is not only considered a very disciplined and unusually athletic bishop – at the crack of dawn, before morning prayers, he always starts his daily jog through Bamberg. He is also regarded as one of the more reform-oriented bishops in the debate about modernizing the Catholic Church. “I would rate him as moderately conservative, with great pastoral empathy and a sensitive ecumenical attitude,” says Schüller. The chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK), Georg Bätzing, expressly thanked Schick for “following” the synodal path and for having “appropriated many aspects”.
In an interview with the German Press Agency in March, Schick spoke of a “brotherly, family church” as the ideal image before the spring plenary assembly of the DBK in the Upper Franconian pilgrimage site of Vierzehnheiligen. Regarding the abuse scandal, he said: “Unspeakable things happened in the church.”
Abuse allegations in their own diocese
In his own diocese, allegations of abuse against a long-standing pastor in Wallenfels (Kronach district) in Upper Franconia only became known in October. Parishioners described it as incomprehensible that the priest had been able to work as parish priest for years, although allegations against him had been on record since 1963. Just a few days ago, the chairman of the Munich Advisory Board for Affected Persons, Richard Kick, named Bamberg as a negative example of the work-up after a meeting of the Advisory Boards for Affected Persons from all Catholic Bavarian dioceses.
Canon law expert Schüller, on the other hand, praises Schick as a “real bridge builder between the reformers and the arch-conservative brakemen in the Bishops’ Conference”. After the resignation request from Archbishop Hans-Josef Becker from Paderborn, Schick’s request is the second in a short time that Francis has accepted before the age limit, says Schüller. “One would wish that the pope would also show this willingness to make decisions with the third archbishop, the cardinal of Cologne, Mr. Rainer Maria Woelki, who submitted his request for resignation some time ago.”
According to the diocese, the Bamberg cathedral chapter will elect an administrator as soon as possible, who will now lead the archdiocese until Pope Francis has appointed a successor to Schick.
Source: Stern

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