A Catholic priest has said he will continue
to speak out after he was reported to police for a New Year’s Eve homily
in which he strongly criticized the leadership of the Alternative for
Germany party ahead of a snap election.
Fr. Martin Garmaier, a pastor in the Bavarian town of Erding, told
the German Catholic Church’s news website katholisch.de that lawyers
had advised him “that I don’t need to worry because nothing will come of
the report,” although the matter will be investigated by authorities.
In his homily, Garmaier criticized the response of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to the Dec. 20 car attack
at a Christmas market in Magdeburg that killed six people and injured
almost 300 others. Police at the scene arrested the Saudi Arabian
psychiatrist Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, who gained political asylum in Germany in 2016.
According to his own account
of the Dec. 31 homily, Garmaier accused the AfD — which is widely
described as far right but rejects the term — of using the attack to
promote xenophobia.
He noted that Germans had engaged in terrorist activities through organizations such as the Red Army Faction and National Socialist Underground, as well as a recent synagogue attack, and therefore foreigners should not be automatically equated with criminals.
He
argued that if AfD co-leader Alice Weidel and others exploited the
Madgeburg attack to promote xenophobia, they could be considered
“criminals against society.”
According to
German media, a retired police officer filed a complaint against the
priest for incitement and slander, reportedly highlighting Garmaier’s
use of the term “criminals.”
In Germany, a criminal complaint (Strafanzeige) is a formal report to police that officers must assess, gathering evidence to determine whether to proceed with prosecution.
A German justice ministry website
explains that “police are required to respond to and objectively
investigate every initial suspicion of a crime — this means that they
look for both incriminating and exonerating evidence. This can sometimes
take weeks or even months.”
The local AfD branch said the complainant was not a party member and it had not asked for a complaint to be filed.
The
incident occurred weeks before Germans go to the polls to elect a new
government, following the collapse of the governing coalition led by
Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The AfD, founded in 2013, is expected to perform strongly in the Feb. 23 federal election, following unprecedented success in state elections last September. Polls suggest the party will come second behind the Union parties (CDU/CSU).
Many
political commentators in Germany and throughout Europe consider the
AfD to be a far-right party with nativist tendencies. Its state-level
leader in Thuringia, Björn Uwe Höcke, has been repeatedly fined for
using banned Nazi slogans while campaigning.
However, billionaire twitter.com owner Elon Musk has described the AfD as “the only hope for Germany,” written an op-ed supporting the party, and interviewed Alice Weidel.
Tensions
between the surging political party and the Catholic Church increased
sharply in February last year, when German bishops unanimously approved a
statement condemning what they described as “racial (völkisch) nationalism.”
“After
several waves of radicalization, the Alternative for Germany (AfD)
party in particular is now dominated by a racial-nationalist attitude,”
the bishops said.
The bishops added that
“the dissemination of right-wing extremist slogans — including racism
and anti-Semitism in particular — is incompatible with professional or
voluntary service in the Church.”
The
statement was notable because the Catholic Church is one of Germany’s
biggest employers, with almost 700,000 people alone employed by Caritas.
Germany also has a sprawling network of Catholic associations,
encompassing thousands of paid staff and volunteers.
AfD members were removed from Church posts in the wake of the bishops’ February statement.
The bishops later clarified their criteria for dismissing supporters of “extremist” parties from Church positions. In a document
that mentioned the AfD 56 times, the bishops said decisions should be
made on a case-by-case basis, weighing the intensity of a person’s
“extremist tendencies” and the prominence of the post he or she holds.
Garmaier told
the Cologne-based Catholic news website domradio.de that he had
received no official response to his homily from his Archdiocese of
Munich and Freising, led by Cardinal Reinhard Marx.
He
said that any response would likely be “more of an encouragement,
because I’m firmly convinced that our cardinal thinks in a very similar
way.”
Sven-Joachim Otto, deputy chairman of Germany’s Association of Catholic Lawyers (BKR), told
katholisch.de that the Garmaier case would likely turn on what the
priest meant by the word “criminals” in reference to Weidel and others.
He
said there was good reason to assume “that the pastor did not use this
term in the literal sense, as if Weidel had really been accused of a
punishable crime, but rather as an exaggeration.”
But Otto suggested it would have been prudent not to use the term.
“If
he had said, for example, that Weidel had sinned against migrants with
her reaction to the terrorist attack, that would have been completely
unproblematic from a legal point of view,” he commented.
CNA Deutsch reported
that Garmaier also offered a review of 2024 in his New Year’s Eve
homily, saying the synod on synodality “fell short of expectations” but
offered “reason for hope.”
“Perhaps I will live to see women ordained as priests,” he reportedly said.
The AfD was founded by disillusioned members of the center-right Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), with a platform of abolishing the euro, the currency of 20 European Union member states.
Following
the arrival of a record 1.1 million asylum seekers in 2015, the
coronavirus pandemic, the Ukraine war, and a cost of living crisis, the
AfD evolved into what many commentators describe as a far-right party —
though supporters dispute the label.
The AfD’s current program argues that individual protection and asylum guarantees in Germany’s Basic Law “cannot be upheld” in “today’s conditions of mass, globalized migration.”
It seeks to prevent “the further spread of segregated Islamic parallel societies” within Germany. It also promises
its policies will make Germany “more family- and child-friendly,” and
says it rejects “all efforts to declare the killing of unborn children a
human right.”
Speaking to katholisch.de, Garmaier insisted it was appropriate to address politics in homilies.
He
said: “As preachers, it is our task to proclaim the word of God. To do
this appropriately, we often also have to be political, because as a
Church we do not operate in a vacuum, but are part of society.”
“For
us as a Church, it must be about representing certain values that stem
from Christianity. These include human rights, in other words, respect
for every human being — regardless of where they come from and what they
are. And from this perspective, I see a lot to criticize in the AfD,
and especially in Weidel.”
Asked if he
would speak out again from the pulpit ahead of the federal election,
Garmaier said: “I will certainly not moderate myself in my homilies, but
it is also not my job per se to comment on election results in a
homily.”
“However, if it seems appropriate to me in terms of content, I will certainly say something about political issues again.”
