The $20,000 bathtub and $482,000 walk-in closets ordered by “Bishop
Bling-Bling” — the moniker of Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, the
now-suspended bishop of Limburg — have scandalized the German public.
But Tebartz-van Elst, 52, is only the latest German clergyman to run
into trouble since Pope Francis took the helm of the Roman Catholic
Church.
Francis temporarily suspended the bishop while a church commission investigates the expenditures on the $42 million residence complex.
As the new pontiff tries to reform the way the church does business,
German dioceses, which reportedly include the world’s wealthiest in
Cologne, are chafing under the new direction as membership numbers
continue to dwindle.
“Tebartz-van Elst is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Christian
Weisner, spokesman for the German branch of We Are Church, an
organization advocating Catholic Church reform. “There is a real clash
of cultures between Germany’s current cardinals and bishops — nominated
under John Paul II or Benedict XVI — and Pope Francis.”
Since becoming pope, Francis has repeatedly urged the church to strip
itself of all “vanity, arrogance and pride” and humbly serve the
poorest in society.
Under Francis, priests living in luxury are no
longer merely unseemly, but a scandal.
Still, even as Francis drives around Vatican City in a 20-year-old
white Renault clunker gifted by an Italian priest, the head of the
German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, balked at the
idea of giving up his company car, a BMW 740d.
“To me that car is not a status symbol, it is the office I use when I
am traveling,” Zollitsch said at a press event in early October, when
asked whether he would trade it down.
In Germany, most of the church’s top officials drive high-powered Mercedes, BMWs or Audis.
Other German clergymen have been chastised for lavish expenditures.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich’s archdiocese spent around $11 million
renovating the archbishop’s residence and another $13 million for a
guesthouse in Rome.
Still, for German Catholics, those luxuries pale in comparison to the
current case surrounding Tebartz-van Elst and the renovation of his
residence in Limburg, which is close to Frankfurt.
Originally, the
refurbishment of the estate’s 10 buildings had been slated to cost $7.5
million but it ballooned to almost six times that amount because of
extravagances such as expensive fixtures.
Carsten Frerk, who specializes on church finances in Germany, said
German bishops’ reluctance to follow Francis’ new course is no surprise.
“The German Catholic Church is one of the country’s wealthiest and
largest organizations and its top officials expect a certain lifestyle,”
said Frerk, who has published two books on the German churches’ wealth
and what he describes as their opaque financing. “But they are wary of
the extent of their wealth becoming broadly known because it might lead
to fewer donations.”
There are 23 million German Catholics who have declared their faith
and by law must pay 8 to 10 percent of their incomes to their respective
churches. That brought the Catholic Church $7.1 billion in tax revenue
in 2012.
Since the secularization process instigated by Napoleon in the early 19th
century, the state also pays the Protestant and Catholic churches an
annual allowance as compensation, which yielded a combined total of
about $12 million for the Christian groups in 2012.
But the 27 Catholic dioceses in Germany have a large number of
assets, such as real estate or bonds. According to John Berwick,
religious affairs analyst for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, the
diocese of Cologne is richer than the Vatican.
Meanwhile, the case of Tebartz-van Elst has focused the spotlight on the church’s opaque financing.
In 2010, 25 of Germany’s 27 dioceses refused to supply the newsweekly
Der Spiegel with information on their budgets and assets. Following the
Tebartz-van Elst scandal, several bishoprics — including Cologne,
Hamburg, Essen and Munster — have made their financial figures public.
There are advantages to the German church’s wealth. Mathew Schmalz,
theologian and professor at the Massachusetts-based College of the Holy
Cross, who now lives in Sri Lanka, said that without its resources, the
church could not support projects in developing countries.
And in Germany, that is the crux of the problem, say analysts. It is
important to show congregations that clergy are not the arrogant, aloof
spiritual advisers that many German Catholics believe they have become.
For example, after the spending on the renovations came to light,
petitions for Tebartz-van Elst to step down circulated.
But the bishop
remained silent.
And even though he flew to Rome for an audience with the pope on a
budget flight rather than the first-class fare, many say such a gesture
was too little too late.
Now the question remains to what extent the traditional German church
can keep step with Pope Francis’ reforms and whether their efforts
could put a stop to their bleeding membership rolls — predicted to
reduce Christians to a minority within Germany in the next 20 years.
In 2010, 181,000 left the church after the sexual abuse scandals
involving German priests were made public. Another 126,000 in 2011 and
118,000 in 2012 followed suit.
“I think this conflict surrounding Tebartz-van Elst, who is not
willing to resign, will be one of the defining moments for the future
course of the Catholic Church,” Weisner said. “This is a historic moment
in time and a unique chance for renewal.”