Despite concerns from the Vatican, the German Catholic bishops want to stick to their reform course. “The broad majority of bishops stand behind the reform concerns of the Synodal Path and are striving for lasting changes,” said president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Baetzing, at the end of the plenary assembly in Dresden on Thursday.
“Above all, however, we need the Synodal Committee to evaluate the results of the Synodal Path reform project with its five Synodal Assemblies, to continue to work on and with these results,” Baetzing continued.
The Vatican recently further restricted the scope for reform in Germany and ruled out the planned establishment of a joint governing body of laypeople and clergy, a so-called Synodal Council, at all levels. The final decision-making meeting of the Synodal Path reform project will take place in Frankfurt next week.
The Bishops’ Conference elected its president, Bishop Baetzing of Limburg, and the bishops of Augsburg, Bertram Meier, and Essen, Franz-Josef Overbeck, as their representatives for the World Synod of Bishops in Rome in autumn, as announced on Thursday.
As part of their reform efforts, the bishops also want to take a closer look at spiritual abuse. Baetzing pointed to a scientific project that will start soon at the University of Muenster that aims to identify factors that trigger so-called spiritual abuse and to develop ways of preventing it.
*Originally reported by KNA Germany.
