Pope in Germany urges spiritual renewal

FREIBURG, Ger­many (AP) — Pope Bene­dict XVI issued a strong call for spir­i­tual renewal among Ger­mans, as he wrapped up a visit to his home­land in which he addressed par­lia­ment and met with vic­tims of cler­i­cal abuse.

The pope drew hun­dreds of thou­sands of Ger­man faith­ful to ser­vices held on stops dur­ing his trip, includ­ing a final Mass early Sun­day that attracted about 100,000 peo­ple to an air­field beside Freiburg’s airport.

In his part­ing words before leav­ing for Rome late Sun­day, Bene­dict wished Ger­mans “strength and con­fi­dence” in their faith, under­lin­ing a mes­sage repeated at each stop of his four-day trip.

From Berlin to Erfurt and, finally Freiburg, Bene­dict stressed the impor­tance of faith, whether as the basis for a thriv­ing democ­racy or as a force that helped to resist com­mu­nism in the for­mer East Ger­many. He stressed the need for Roman Catholics to show unity with Rome, which he said has no inten­tion of bow­ing to groups demand­ing changes in the church’s teaching.

“The church in Ger­many will con­tinue to be a bless­ing for the entire Catholic world if she remains faith­fully united with the suc­ces­sors of St. Peter and the Apos­tles,” Bene­dict said in his homily.

Germany’s church has seen large num­bers of faith­ful quit­ting the con­gre­ga­tion in recent years, includ­ing a record 181,000 who left fol­low­ing last year’s cler­i­cal abuse scan­dal in Germany.

Bene­dict sought to address the issue, hold­ing a closed-door meet­ing with five vic­tims of cler­i­cal abuse on Fri­day, and allud­ing to the scan­dal in his speech to Catholics on Sun­day after­noon, men­tion­ing “other painful scan­dals on the part of the preach­ers of the faith.”

In his Sun­day homily, Bene­dict strongly urged Catholics to let their lives be guided by their faith, say­ing even those who doubt God’s exis­tence “are closer to the king­dom of God than believ­ers whose faith is rou­tine and who regard the church merely as an insti­tu­tion, with­out let­ting their hearts be touched by faith.”

The pope’s remarks to his Ger­man flock are “an encour­age­ment to fol­low the path of faith in today’s soci­ety,” the head of the country’s Bish­ops Con­fer­ence, Arch­bishop Robert Zol­litsch said Sunday.

Yet many Ger­mans heav­ily con­test the church’s teach­ing on such issues as priestly celibacy, con­tra­cep­tion, homo­sex­u­al­ity and a ban on women becom­ing priests. Pro­test­ers staged demon­stra­tions at all three stops of his jour­ney, with about 9,000 decry­ing the church in Berlin.

While acknowl­edg­ing the chal­lenges of a declin­ing flock, the pon­tiff made clear the church should not be con­sid­ered just another orga­ni­za­tion, but instead was built to carry out Christ’s mission.

“For some decades now, we have been expe­ri­enc­ing a decline in reli­gious prac­tice and we have been see­ing sub­stan­tial num­bers of the bap­tized drift­ing away from church life,” he said in a speech to Catholic laymen.

“This prompts the ques­tion: should the church not change?”

He then answered that ques­tion by cit­ing Mother Theresa as say­ing the first thing that she would change in the church would be “you and I.”

Ear­lier dur­ing the trip, the pope also told sem­i­nar­ists that the church’s mis­sion can­not be sub­ject to chang­ing trends or majorities.

“There can never be a major­ity against the apos­tles, against the saints. Then it is a wrong major­ity,” he said Sat­ur­day accord­ing to a tran­script from Radio Vatican.

The pope’s call in his Sun­day homily for a per­pet­ual spir­i­tual renewal, mean­while, was well received.

“He made it clear that the church must be lively, that it’s not about the orga­ni­za­tion but about what one has in his heart,” said pil­grim Julia Eibeck from Stuttgart.

Oth­ers said expe­ri­enc­ing a Mass led by the pope com­bined with the feel­ing of com­mu­nity was a unique expe­ri­ence for them.

“It’s all about a joint expe­ri­ence, you see how many peo­ple turn out to pray with the pope, that cre­ates a dynamic of its own,” said Joachim Zim­mer­mann, 51, from Freiburg.

Some, how­ever, crit­i­cized the pope failed to dis­cuss the church’s own fail­ings in address­ing the faithful.

“The pope spoke about humil­ity and respon­si­bil­ity. But he failed to men­tion the church’s own respon­si­bil­ity regard­ing the issue of sex­ual abuse cases,” said Ste­fan Haak.

“The church, too, is fal­li­ble,” said the 46-year-old from Freiburg, who had brought his two chil­dren to attend the Mass.

Bene­dict alluded to the dis­sent in Catholic ranks on Sat­ur­day night, when he said that through the years “dam­age to the church comes not from oppo­nents, but from uncom­mit­ted Christians.”

The 84-year-old pope has seemed tired at times dur­ing the four-day-visit, but his spokesman said “he’s extra­or­di­nar­ily well” despite the heavy schedule.

“We are sur­prised that he man­aged so well this trip that was so intense. It’s a great sat­is­fac­tion for us,” Fed­erico Lom­bardi said.

Posted by AP News on Sep 25 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.