GERMANY
Vatican Insider
Never before has the German Church seen a media campaign on the same scale as the one launched against the Bishop of Limburg
GUIDO HORST
BERLIN
The list of bishops who should be packing their bags in light of the fierce media campaign launched against them in German-speaking lands, is by no means short: the Vatican moved Bishop Wolfgang Haas of Chur away from Switzerland and out of the press and ecclesiastical leadership’s firing line, to the safe haven of the Archdiocese of Valduz in Lichtenstein, established for him in 1997. In 1995 the press sullied Viennese cardinal Hans Hermann Groer’s name, accusing him of sexual molestation, but these accusations came to nothing thanks to the zealous intervention of former suffragan bishop, Christoph Schönborn. Similarly, in Austrian in 2004, Kurt Krenn of Sankt Pölten was forced to step back after years of attacks and accusations of sexual abuse scandals in his Seminary. Another scandal broke out in Germany, in 2010, involving the Bishop of Augusta Walter Mixa. He was not convincing enough in his defence against charges that he beat school children in his years as a religious studies teacher. He ended up handing in his resignation.
Now, it is the fate of the Bishop of Limburg, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, that is hanging by a thread. The bishop apparently spent gigantic sums of money on a lavish new bishop’s residence and diocesan centre and gave false statements to the press regarding a first-class flight he took to India. All these cases, from Groer to Tebartz-van Elst, have something in common: all of these bishops had or have fully embraced the “Roman line” (this is not necessarily a given for prelates in the German-speaking world) and enjoyed the strong support of the Pope in office. There is a growing fear among Germany’s “conservative” bishops, that the media could from one moment to the next target another one of their unpopular confreres. They may do so if one of these bishops seems to them to be too faithful to Rome and too traditionalist.
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