GERMANY
Spiegel
By Martin U. Müller and Peter Wensierski
He extols the virtues of poverty and humility, but the German bishop of Limburg enjoys first-class flights and a luxurious new living complex. As the truth comes out about their secretive shepherd, local Catholics are threatening to abandon the fold en masse.
The Catholic bishop of Limburg, a small city in western Germany, apparently had noble motives when he boarded a plane to India with his vicar general in mid-January. “We were there to support social projects in and around Bangalore,” Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst reported after his return. They wanted to help children “who worked breaking stones,” he added.
But this man of God didn’t just want to do something good for the poor. He also wanted to do something nice for himself. On the upper deck of a jumbo jet, he and Vicar General Franz Kaspar had made themselves comfortable in the plane’s first-class section, which offers such amenities as champagne, caviar and a bed. “Traveling first class means you should always be able to expect the extraordinary,” Germany’s Lufthansa airline, which Kaspar flew with, promises.
SPIEGEL inquiries about this luxury trip to the slums triggered a flurry of contradictory reports. Questions directed to the diocese press office were answered by a law firm in nearby Frankfurt. The 10-page document contained a cease and desist declaration with a penalty clause forbidding the publication of the claim that the bishop had flown first-class to India — as well as a €1,890.91 ($2,400) bill for the legal warning. The bishop’s lawyer said that the claim “is untrue” and that his client had “flown business class.”
But after a follow-up written inquiry, the whole story changed a few days later. Suddenly, the truth was out. Now it was admitted that the bishop and his vicar general had, in fact, sat in first class on both the outbound and return flights. But this was qualified with a claim that this was only made possible because the vicar general — who enjoys “Senator” status with Lufthansa, which requires at least 100,000 annual status miles — had used reward points to purchase upgrades from business class in what the lawyer described as a “purely private” action. …
Meanwhile, funds are tight or insufficient across the diocese. There isn’t enough money for the upkeep of churches, parishes are being consolidated and funding for Catholic day care centers is being slashed. All of this is part of the bishop’s tough cost-cutting measures.
Ever since construction on the bishop’s complex began and the extent of his ambitions became known, the atmosphere among Limburg’s Catholics has been poisoned. Indeed, the contradictions between the bishop’s words and his lifestyle have enraged many believers. One member of the cathedral’s choir loudly voiced her anger immediately after a mass. “Many church communities don’t know where they are going to get the money to pay to heat their churches next winter or to make urgently needed repairs to their church roofs,” she said.
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