Cardinal Walter Kasper, a high Vatican official who heads the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, is to receive an honour in his former German home, but only after long debate.The mayor of Rottenburg am Neckar, Volker Derbogen, said Wednesday that the Rome official would be made an honorary burgher, to mark his 75th birthday on March 5.
Some residents objected to the honour, charging that the former bishop of Rottenburg and Stuttgart had worked against the town during his tenure, seeking to relocate the diocesan seat to the big city of Stuttgart.
Kasper, widely regarded as a liberal theologian, is the most senior German in the Vatican after Pope Benedict XVI.
Though not born in Rothenburg, he was bishop in the town from 1989 to 1999.
Some locals were upset that Kasper set up a second home in Stuttgart and permitted debate, ultimately in vain, about the diocese, one of 27 in Germany, shifting its management offices.
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