The Church in Germany: Let us pray for an authentic renewal, so that the 500-year anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in Germany in 2017 will not commemorate this event by its repetition.

The Real Scandal in Germany

by Marie Meaney

One might think we were living back in the days of the Renaissance. Tremendously high expenses for “luxurious” buildings by the Bishop of Limburg have brought him into the headlines as the “Protz-Bischof” (“the showy Bishop”). Scandal has rocked the diocese and Rome decided therefore in October 2013 that bishop Tebartz-van Elst was to take some time out, while a committee investigated the matter. He has retired to the Bavarian monastery of Metten, while awaiting a final decision.

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On Sunday, the German news magazine Focus reported online that the committee set up by the bishops’ conference to investigate the matter had reached the following conclusion: Tebartz-van Elst had not wasted any money on the diocesan center, nor had he side-stepped anybody. 

This news was leaked, however, and cannot be given the weight of an official statement. Since then the speaker of the bishops’ conference, Matthias Kopp, has explained that the commission has not yet finished its work and that its findings will first go to the bishops in February and then to Rome before being presented to the public. 

But an interview with archbishop Georg Gänswein, prefect of the papal household, a week earlier, points in the same direction; for Gänswein declared he thought Tebartz-van Elst would be exonerated.


What will happen with the diocese?

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