Vatican cardinal: Pope Francis 'worried' about the Church in Germany

A Vatican cardinal said Tuesday that Pope Francis has expressed concern for the Church in Germany.

On September 22, Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, told Herder Korrespondenz magazine that he believed the pope supported an intervention by the Vatican doctrinal office in a debate on intercommunion between Catholics and Protestants.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) wrote last week to Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German bishops' conference, saying that a proposal for a "Eucharistic scholarship" would damage relations with the Orthodox Churches.

Asked if the pope personally approved the letter from the CDF, dated September 18, Koch said: “There is no mention of this in the text. But the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ladaria, is a very honest and loyal person. I can't imagine he would have done something that Pope Francis would not approve of. But I have also heard from other sources that the pope has expressed his concern in personal conversations ”.

The cardinal made it clear that he was not simply referring to the question of intercommunion.

"Not only that, but on the situation of the Church in Germany in general," he said, noting that Pope Francis addressed a long letter to German Catholics in June 2019.

The Swiss cardinal praised the CDF's criticism of the document “Together with the Lord's Table”, published by the Ecumenical Study Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians (ÖAK) in September 2019.

The 57-page text advocates “mutual Eucharistic hospitality” between Catholics and Protestants, based on previous ecumenical agreements on the Eucharist and ministry.

The ÖAK adopted the document under the co-presidency of Bätzing and retired Lutheran bishop Martin Hein.

Bätzing recently announced that the text's recommendations will be put into practice at the Ecumenical Church Congress in Frankfurt in May 2021.

Koch described the CDF's critique as "very serious" and "factual".

He noted that the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity had been involved in the discussions on the CDF letter and had personally raised concerns about the ÖAK document with Bätzing.

"Those don't seem to have convinced him," he said.

CNA Deutsch, CNA's German-language journalistic partner, reported on September 22 that the German bishops would discuss the CDF's letter during the autumn plenary meeting, which began on Tuesday.

When Bätzing was asked about Koch's comments, he said he hadn't had the opportunity to read the interview. But he commented that the CDF's "critical remarks" should be "weighed" in the coming days.

"We want to remove the blocks so that the Church has the opportunity to evangelize in the secular world in which we move," he said.

Koch told Herder Korrespondenz that the German bishops could not continue as before after the intervention of the CDF.

"If the German bishops rated such a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith less than a document from an ecumenical working group, then something would no longer be right in the hierarchy of criteria among the bishops," he said. .