The bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic German Bishops’ Conference, Georg Baetzing, has said he considers the speed of the Church reform in Germany to be remarkable.
In an interview with Germany’s Catholic News Agency (KNA) on Thursday in Limburg, Baetzing asked when there had ever been bishops who had proceeded at such a pace. “I wish it could go faster, but we also have to stay together as much as possible and take as many with us as possible,” he said.
Asked if he himself was brave enough to implement what he thought was right, Baetzing said: “When I read the criticism that I too receive every day, I would say: you can take a lot, you keep going straight ahead. I would say: that’s quite a bit of courage at this time”.
He said he was currently preoccupied with the issue of a possible priestly ordination of married men, so-called viri probati (“married men of proven virtue.”)
“I recently ordained married deacons and inwardly asked myself: why shouldn’t they be able to be priests?” said Baetzing.
Asked why previous generations of bishops had neglected the subject of abuse, he said: “Obviously the maxim applied: the institution must be protected at all costs. The suffering of the victims was simply not seen, not acknowledged, also because there was no direct contact with victims”.
Also, the victims themselves had usually not been at the stage “that they could stand up, they had no voice – that had changed, thank God, and that changes all of us.
The bishop added: “The Church itself, we have made ourselves untrustworthy to a large extent, for many people”. He said he was aware of the level of anger and frustration among the faithful. He aimed to “make the church a home for the people again”.
Baetzing (61) has been bishop of the diocese of Limburg since September 2016 and president of the German Bishops’ Conference since March 2020.
