Desk of Contents Learn the Desk of Contents on one web page
Web page 1Who will practice Batzing?
Web page 2 The brand new man will have to be just right at communicate displays and just right in Rome
Is the chancellor chaplain coming now? As quickly because the ill-fated chairman of the Catholic German Bishops’ Convention (DBK) Georg Batzing introduced on Monday that he would surrender his 2d time period, consideration grew to become to his successor: will Bishop Udo Markus Benz turn out to be the brand new first guy some of the nation’s 20 million Catholics – and thus the bishop, on whose territory Sauerncell’s house may be positioned?
When the chancellor flew to the inauguration of the brand new Pope Leo Benz, a seat at the roof of the Campo Santo Teutonico, the standard German seat throughout the Vatican partitions, owed to Merz’s non-public invitation. Like different CDU chairmen earlier than him, the chancellor attaches nice significance to just right members of the family with the church buildings, even though at the moment they are able to rarely be routinely observed as a entrance for the Union’s group.
The Bishop of Paderborn, Udo Markus Benz, 58, is definitely attached throughout the CDU. © Julia Steinbrecht/KNA
Benz is similarly conversant in the church and the CDU: he had his first outstanding place in 1998 as personal secretary to Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz, a detailed confidant of CDU Palatinate Chancellor Helmut Kohl. At the side of Lehmann, who have been on the helm of the bishops’ convention longer than any of his successors, Benz was once, in an effort to talk, skilled at the task. After a number of years of apply as an auxiliary bishop in Mainz since 2015, he got here in 2024 to the distinguished put up of archbishop in Paderborn, some of the richest dioceses in Europe. Essentially the most outstanding visitor on the inauguration within the cathedral: Friedrich Mertz.
© They have got arrived
Publication What now? – Day by day morning overview
Thanks! We have now despatched you an e-mail.
Take a look at your mailbox and make sure your subscription to the publication.
Udo Markus Benz is in no way the one conceivable successor on the best of the DBK, however he’s characterised through what Georg Betzing so painfully lacked and which will have spoiled his pleasure over a 2d six-year time period: a way of energy and a willingness to means it within the carrier of his place of work. Being the manager lobbyist for the chancellor and the cupboard is not any small activity for the president of the bishops’ convention, particularly in occasions of declining affect of the Catholic and Protestant church buildings.
This text comes from ZEIT no. 04/2026. You’ll be able to learn all of the factor right here. Uncover the discharge
The carrier on the best of German Catholics takes position in one of those ellipse with two geographically and politically reverse peaks: Berlin and Rome, i.e. now not handiest the middle of federal politics but additionally the middle of the common church, which is given further weight through the brand new, American Pope Leo XIV. Betzing’s handicap was once that he was once now not smartly attached in any city and almost certainly didn’t like running in anybody position. He will get homesick temporarily, says anyone who labored smartly with him. Not like many clergymen, Making a bet by no means studied at a Vatican college, ultimate a German from the far flung, small diocese of Limburg within the Italian-dominated Papal States.
His loss of status within the Vatican made it unnecessarily tough for the president to advance his pastime venture there: higher lay participation within the church’s decision-making processes. Rome’s involvement is especially vital to this factor, which to start with seems to be inside Germany, the place unbiased efforts north of the Alps have all the time been feared for the reason that Reformation 500 years in the past because of the cut up in Una Sancta, the only holy Roman Catholic Church.
The brand new pope indubitably gives alternatives for the long run president of the convention. As a moderately younger pontiff, Leo – assuming just right well being – will have a preach of ten, fifteen and even 20 years forward of him. Which means that he’ll in all probability additionally play the function of arbitrator within the central dispute of arranged German Catholicism, i.e. the query of the way a lot participation and decision-making energy must be given to peculiar believers sooner or later.
In a tortuous negotiation procedure lasting a number of years – the so-called Synodal Street – since 2019, the bishops and lay associations of the Central Committee of German Catholics are seeking to outline a brand new advisory and in all probability decision-making gadget, together with new committees. Since this is going too a ways for some conservative bishops, who really feel that their proper to unique illustration for “all Catholics” is at risk, they continuously interfere and intrigue in Rome in opposition to the synodal trail. In doing so, they made it tough for Georg Betzing specifically to regulate the synodal street.
The truth that this crew of dissidents is in large part led through two debatable and conservative figures does now not make the placement any more uncomplicated for any long run president of the bishops’ convention. At the one hand, there may be Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Volcki, who has been hit with accusations of a cover-up, and who has already introduced his resignation to Pope Francis, which, for mysterious causes, he neither permitted nor officially refused till his loss of life. As well as, Woelky, as Cologne’s endlessly quarrelsome leader shepherd, may just conflict with huge sections of his personal clientele, from the clergy to vital sections of the laity to the episcopate’s main high quality newspaper, the Kelner Stadt-Anzeiger.
Supporting the Cologne cardinal is the dynamic, every so often charismatic-fundamentalist Bishop of the Provincial Diocese of Passau, Stephan Oster, whose occupation has persevered for the reason that loss of life of the Bavarian Pope Benedict XVI. he stopped. Then again, the dissidents seem to be a ways from a majority or perhaps a veto block on the bishops’ convention.
Betzing’s success was once that he didn’t permit himself to be distracted through the intrigues of his fellow bishops, nor was once he captivated through the regularly purely rhetorical caution of Habbach in opposition to any democratization throughout the church; Rome would indubitably have reservations.
