BONN (GERMANY)
Catholic News Service via National Catholic Reporter
December 29, 2020
Most people looking back at 2020 will mainly see the coronavirus pandemic, but the Catholic Church in Germany was rattled by a number of other issues as well, from the impact of the sexual abuse scandal to the debates surrounding the Synodal Path that reverberated beyond Germany’s borders and triggered interventions from Rome.
The German Catholic news agency KNA reported it has been a demanding year for the president of the German bishops’ conference, Limburg Bishop Georg Bätzing. Since his election in March, the coronavirus has severely curtailed church life, including an Easter without public religious services and accusations that the churches submitted too readily to the state-imposed lockdown — to the extent that even the dying were abandoned. During the second lockdown, church services were spared, subject to conditions.
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