GERMANY
Deutsche Welle
With Germany’s most profligate bishop now in Rome, where his fate will be decided by Pope Francis, the faithful remain behind in Limburg. The mood at the bishop’s residence is tense, to say the least.
The clouds hang low over Limburg cathedral. In the city of 34,000, the air is still. Like every other day, tourists march up the winding paved road. Cameras click. But these lenses zoom in – not on the seven towers of the late-romantic gothic cathedral that lords so magisterially over Limburg’s old town – but on the bishop’s new home there. Construction costs are said to have swallowed 31 million euros ($42 million).
“Unimaginable,” is how Ortwin Schäfer describes it. The pensioner hails from Lebach, a small German city two hours’ drive from Limburg. A parish board member for 28 years, Schäfer watched over his Catholic community’s finances – and never experienced anything remotely close to the events in Limburg.
“We had to pinch every penny,” he tells DW. “That’s a slap in the face to a common man. What a waste. I think it’s just atrocious.”
The pensioner also wonders where the money came from. The biggest chunk of change is supposed to have come from the Episcopal See’s private holdings, over which the bishop has sole authority.
“That [policy] has to be changed at the highest levels,” Schäfer said.
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