Nothing is sacred as Germany’s battle of the bishops heats up

Forget Big Brother: the Catholic Church in Germany is getting an early start this summer with its Big Bishop house. The reality show features warring clerics, a row over Jesus’s loincloth and a surprise new arrival from Rome to stir things up – more on which later.

The story so far revolves around Cardinal Rainer-Maria Woelki (66), the archbishop of Cologne since 2014, a leading conservative cleric and a staunch defender of a male-only celibate Catholic priesthood.

He has been under fire for years, accused of blocking efforts to investigate – and compensate – survivors of clerical sexual abuse and for suppressing an unflattering study into abuse and its cover-up in the archdiocese.

His reputation is such that few local church groups or organisations want to work with, or even be seen with, Cardinal Woelki. Though Woelki has submitted a letter of resignation with Pope Francis, the pontiff has yet to accept it, leaving him, as a Cologne newspaper described it this week, a “bishop without a flock”.

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The stand-off reached crisis point last Sunday when Archbishop Helmut Dieser of nearby Aachen, fearing protests, asked Cardinal Woelki to stay away from a special Mass displaying local relics including cloths believed to be Jesus’s loincloth and swaddling clothes.

A furious Cardinal Woelki hit back, saying that “no one must be allowed instrumentalise the Eucharist for their own aims”. If he was expecting fellow bishops to rally around him, he was wrong.

Germany’s synodal pathway process has caused alarm in Rome for being too progressive and liberal. So far Pope Francis has yet to respond

Most are sick of the Cologne cardinal. Bishop Georg Bätzing, head of the bishops’ conference, described conversations to convince the cardinal that his days in Cologne are numbered as “like talking to a dead horse”.

Before leaving Cologne for Rome this weekend, and what his office called “a long-scheduled appointment”, Cardinal Woelki hit back with a vengeance.

With three fellow conservative bishops he has blocked funding for a steering committee to implement measures – from gay couple blessings to female deacons – agreed in Germany’s synodal pathway process.

This process, feeding into global Catholic synodal process later this year, has caused alarm in Rome for being too progressive and liberal. So far Pope Francis has yet to respond to the final German synodal report, a move one senior bishop here called “hugely disrespectful and obstructive – but also a sign of helplessness”.

Instead of a letter, the pope, by way of reply, has sent back to Germany – with no return possible – Georg Gänswein. The former assistant of and gatekeeper to the late pope Benedict was once dubbed the “Vatican’s George Clooney”. But the 66-year-old titular archbishop fell out of favour with Francis over perceived disloyalty, compounded by a tell-all memoir.

After nearly three decades in Rome, Gänswein has been evicted from his Holy See apartment and will return next week to his homeland – news that has sparked more widespread confusion than universal joy.

Senior German clerics admit they do not know what Gänswein plans to do outside diocesan structures as a second archbishop in the southwestern city of Freiburg. As one senior cleric joked grimly: “Rome has laid in our nest a nice cuckoo’s egg.”

As the papal aide returns to Germany, the ghost of Benedict is already here.

This week the district court of Traunstein, the late pope’s spiritual home in Bavaria, began hearing the case of a 39-year-old Andreas Perr. He says he was abused by a priest – and a known abuser – who was appointed to his parish by Joseph Ratzinger, later pope Benedict, during the latter’s time as archbishop of Munich and Freising.

The man is seeking €350,000 in damages and, in a preliminary ruling this week, the court found the Catholic Church, as an institution, can be made legally liable for its abusing priests. Last week a Cologne court delivered a similar ruling, ordering the archdiocese to pay €300,000 in damages to a local abuse survivor.

For church law expert Thomas Schüller, these rulings represent a “breakthrough for German legal history” – with huge financial implications for the wider Catholic Church in Germany.

Hours before the Traunstein case opened, the local church of St Oswald announced that unknown thieves had stolen from a glass case a pectoral cross, bequeathed by pope Benedict in his will. In Catholic Germany’s Big Bishop house nothing, it seems, is sacred.