He can confirm from his own experience that this is not easy: "Only relatively late I learned to meet homosexual people open-minded and unbiased," Neymeyr said, according to the speech manuscript at the Elisabeth reception of his diocese on Thursday.
"I really had to practice, someone I knew was married to a same-sex man to ask: 'How are your husband doing?' or 'How are your wife?'" says the Bishop of Erfurt. Here, the church and society are "always still on the way".
Neymeyr cited as another example that he had only learned the unbiased treatment of people with disabilities as a chaplain when a residential group for young people had been set up in the parish there despite the protest of the neighborhood.
"Some young people of this residential group also came to the service and invited me to their residential group. I was there regularly and I very much appreciated the carefree open-mindedness of these people," says Neymeyr.
When a priest from Nigeria took over the holiday representative in his home community, he did not initially know how to meet this priest as a transmitter. At a slide presentation with pictures from the priest's homeland, "the ice cream was broken quite quickly".
He learned the life and treatment of older people during a social internship during his priestly formation, said Neymeyr.
In his speech, the Bishop also stressed that in his view today the human dignity must be fought for human dignity. Article 1 of the Basic Law is "a current obligation" for politicians and state institutions.
In his speech, he also pointed out that work belongs to human dignity. "It is an expression of human dignity that man deserves his living."
In this context, Neymeyr spoke out in favour of even refugees having to earn their own livelihood through work. The prerequisite for this is "language courses, integration courses, swift recognition of training qualifications, childcare – and, of course, our own openness to people from other cultures".
At the same time, it should not be attractive to "live from state alimentation." Catholic social doctrine calls for structures that enabled people to work adequately under humane conditions. "But this also means that wherever it is possible, people should also pursue gainful employment as an expression of their human dignity."
At the reception of Elizabeth, the outgoing Thuringian Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (left) praised the Katholikentag in Erfurt in June of this year.
"I was convinced that the city of Erfurt, the state of Thuringia and the Catholic Church, together with our Protestant brothers and sisters, would create something great – and that is exactly what happened," says Ramelow. He met many Protestant Christians who told him that this was the "most beautiful ecumenical church congress they have ever attended."
Since 1992, the Diocese of Erfurt has been hosting Elizabeth's reception as an evening of church and politics.
Every year it is held close to the Memorial Day of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, which is revered as patroness of the diocese.