TRIER (GERMANY)
The Pillar [Washington DC]
October 31, 2025
By Luke Coppen
Two highly anticipated events in the Catholic Church in Germany took place this week.
The first was the release of a report on the handling of abuse cases in the Trier diocese, where Cardinal Reinhard Marx (now of Munich) served as bishop from 2002 to 2007, and where Bishop Georg Bätzing (now German bishops’ conference chairman) was vicar general from 2012 to 2016.
The second was the publication of guidance for Catholic schools on the “recognition of the diversity of sexual identities,” a previous draft of which reportedly provoked disagreements among bishops.
Let’s consider each of these landmark developments more closely.
‘Old habits’ in Trier
In 2010, the Church in Germany was engulfed by an abuse crisis that prompted more than 100,000 Catholics to formally disaffiliate annually for the next 15 years.
In 2019, Cardinal Marx, the then bishops’ conference chairman, announced the launch of the “synodal way,” an initiative bringing together bishops and select lay people to discuss changes to Church teaching and practice.
Synodal way organizers insisted its primary goal was to ensure that abuse could never occur again on such a scale in the Catholic Church in Germany.
The initiative formally ended in 2023 with 150 pages of resolutions that included appeals for women deacons, a re-examination of priestly celibacy, lay preaching at Masses, a larger lay role in selecting bishops, and a revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on homosexuality.
Synodal way leaders argued that all the resolutions — no matter how disparate they seemed — had the unified goal of reducing abuse. The minority of participants who resisted the synodal way’s liberalizing drift said they were made to feel as if they were defending clerical crimes.
Marx, who also serves as the coordinator of the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, offered to resign as Archbishop of Munich and Freising in 2021, saying he wished “to share the responsibility for the catastrophe of the sexual abuse by Church officials over the past decades.” Pope Francis declined his resignation, but Marx was praised in some quarters for the gesture.
On Oct. 30, 2025, Marx issued a statement acknowledging the criticisms of his handling of abuse cases as Bishop of Trier.
The 139-page report, compiled by researchers at the University of Trier, concluded that Marx was not informed of all cases when he was installed in 2002. Under his leadership, the diocese failed to communicate adequately with law enforcement, engaged in “old habits of ‘pastoral leniency’” toward perpetrators, and offered concrete assistance to victims in only two cases.
Reflecting on the report, Marx said it had become increasingly clear to him “that during my time as Bishop of Trier, I did not perceive the issue of sexual violence and sexual abuse as comprehensively and clearly as would have been appropriate.”
“I am aware that the actions of the Trier diocese leadership during my tenure were therefore not always as unequivocal as I would wish them to be from today’s perspective,” he said.
“With the knowledge I have today, I would of course do some things differently, and we are indeed acting differently today. This applies in particular to those directly and indirectly affected. I deeply regret this and ask for forgiveness from those whom I have failed to treat fairly.”
The report looked more favorably on the tenure of Marx’s successor in Trier, Bishop Stephan Ackermann, who continues to lead the diocese. But despite noting improvements in the handling of abuse cases under Ackermann, it also offered criticisms.
The report said that under Ackermann, who oversaw the German bishops’ conference’s response to abuse cases from 2010 to 2022, the diocese processed cases slowly, communicated poorly, allowed convicted offenders to continue working in pastoral roles, and failed to shed light on failures under previous bishops. The report also criticized Ackermann for disclosing the name of a victim — who had requested a pseudonym — during an online meeting of diocesan employees.
In an Oct. 30 statement, Ackermann said: “I can only ask for forgiveness for the new pain that I or my colleagues have caused to victims of sexual violence in our diocese through our actions or inaction. It is their decision whether to grant this forgiveness.”
Bishop Bätzing, who succeeded Marx as bishops’ conference chairman in 2020, was mentioned 31 times in the Trier report. That’s not surprising given he played a major role in the diocese as vicar general from 2012 to 2016, when he was named Bishop of Limburg.
But as the report focused on Marx and Ackermann, it did not offer a detailed evaluation of Bätzing’s decisions. It noted that he served during a “calmer phase” of the abuse crisis in the Trier diocese, and offered no direct criticisms of his role, which was principally to execute Ackermann’s decisions.
Bätzing made no immediate comment on the report. But Regina Einig, a German journalist critical of the synodal way, argued in an Oct. 31 op-ed for Die Tagespost newspaper that neither Marx nor Bätzing emerged from the study “as faces of a people-centered Church, let alone as Catholic avant-garde figures.”
“Synodal role-playing doesn’t help anyone,” she wrote.
Diversity and disagreement
The synodal way’s resolutions included two texts dedicated to matters of sexuality. One called for “a re-evaluation of homosexuality in the Magisterium.” The other focused on “dealing with gender diversity.”
The synodal way documents prompted the German bishops’ conference’s commission for education and schools to prepare a text offering guidance on how Catholic schools should approach issues of sexual identity and gender. In Germany, as in other Western countries, an increasing number of students identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, or under the broader term “queer.”
In early summer 2025, a draft of the new text was presented to the bishops’ conference’s permanent council, which brings together diocesan bishops five or six times a year. According to the German Catholic news agency KNA, the discussion was “very controversial.”
The news agency said that amendments would be submitted to the schools commission, which would ultimately approve and publish the document.
“Withdrawing and abandoning the text, as demanded by some critics, seems highly unlikely,” it noted.
“Reportedly, the text will not be elevated to the status of an official document from the German bishops, but will instead be published by the school commission. This distinction is largely symbolic.”
KNA reported that one of the draft’s chief critics was Franz-Josef Bormann, a priest and moral theologian at the University of Tübingen. It said he believed the text was “driven by feel-good and inclusivity rhetoric, and conceals the medical and psychological problems of many queer or trans-identifying young people.”
KNA said that neither the bishops’ conference nor the text’s authors were willing to respond to the criticisms until after the document was published in its final form.
The bishops’ conference ultimately released the document Oct. 31. The working title, “Created, Shaped, and Loved – Visibility and recognition of sexual identity diversity in schools,” had changed slightly to “Created, Redeemed, and Loved – Visibility and recognition of sexual identity diversity in schools.”
In an introduction to the 48-page text, Bishop Heinrich Timmerevers said it aimed to offer pedagogical and pastoral guidelines, rather than “a comprehensive moral-theological analysis and assessment of the diversity of sexual identities and the associated lifestyles of queer people in schools (young people, teachers, and parents).”
Timmerevers, the chairman of the bishops’ schools commission, wrote: “The starting point for this is the recognition that school must be a place where children and young people find protection from discrimination and personal devaluation, a place where they experience acceptance in their individual development and at the same time learn to accept others.”
“Catholic schools are required to be places where personal self-awareness and holistic development are deepened, especially from a Christian perspective. And, of course, Catholic schools and religious education should be places that offer meaning and interpretation as an invitation to believe in God, who redeemed the world in Jesus Christ. Naturally, the invitation to faith can only ever be an invitation that is met with great respect for the freedom of those invited.”
The document presented five guidelines — fostering holistic development, respecting human dignity, promoting justice, assuming responsibility, and keeping “the question of God alive” — as well as specific recommendations for students, teachers, religious educators, pastoral workers, and school leaders. It ended with a glossary of terms, such as “heteronormativity,” “rainbow family,” and “sexual self-determination.”
Given the apparent strong differences among the bishops before the text’s publication, it will be interesting to see how individual prelates respond to it.
German dioceses were left deeply divided after a document offering guidance on same-sex blessings was issued in April. While some dioceses adopted the text, others rejected it, arguing that it went beyond the Vatican declaration Fiducia supplicans.
Will the schools document trigger a similar split, with some dioceses promoting the text in their schools, while others distance themselves from it? Will some bishops tout “Created, Redeemed, and Loved,” while others uphold the 2019 Vatican text “Male and Female He Created Them,” which adopted a more critical tone toward “the question of gender theory in education”?
The gestation of “Created, Redeemed, and Loved” was controversial. Its reception could well be too.