Pope Francis Is Clear About the German Church: They Have Done What the Holy See Has Forbidden

Pope’s response to four Germans who expressed their concern over the schismatic drift of the greater part of the Catholic Church in Germany

(ZENIT News / Rome, 20.11.2023).- Pope Francis answered a letter of four Germans who expressed their concern over the schismatic drift of the greater part of the Catholic Church in Germany, especially following the constitution of a Synodal Committee forbidden by the Holy Father himself, and which is placed above de local Bishops and the German Episcopal Conference. The Pope’s letter expresses his personal concern and makes evident the distance between the greater part of the German Episcopate and the Holy See.

Here is the Pope’s letter, translated into English.

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Dear
Professor Westerhorstmann,
Professor Schlosser,
Professor Gerl-Falkovitz
Mrs. Schmidt,

Thank you for your kind letter of November 6. You have expressed to me your concern over the current evolution of the Church in Germany. I also share this concern given the numerous concrete steps that are being taken now by extended parts of the local Church and which threaten to distance themselves increasingly from the common path of the universal Church. This includes, without a doubt, the constitution of the Synodal Committee that you have mentioned, and which must prepare the introduction of a consultative and decisional body that, in the form outlined in the corresponding resolution text, cannot be reconciled with the sacramental structure of the Catholic Church and, hence, whose creation was forbidden by the Holy See, in a letter of January 16, 2023, which I approved in a specific way.

Instead of looking for “salvation” in ever new organisms and discussing again and again the same topic with a certain egocentrism, in my “Letter to the Pilgrim People of God in Germany,” I wished to remind of the necessity of prayer, penance and Adoration and invite to open up and go out to our brothers and sisters, especially those that are on the threshold of the doors of our churches, in the streets, in prisons, in hospitals , in squares and in the cities” (n. 8). I am convinced that it is there that the Lord will show us the way.

I thank you for your theological and philosophical work and for your witness of faith. May the Lord bless you and the Most Holy Virgin Mary protect you and I beg you to continue praying for me and for our common cause of unity.

United in the Lord,

Francis