Strasbourg archbishop tenders resignation but defends tenure

The head of a prominent French archdiocese said Thursday that he had presented his resignation to Pope Francis, but strongly defended his turbulent six-year tenure.

At 65 years of age, Archbishop Luc Ravel is a decade away from the customary retirement age for diocesan bishops.

In an April 20 statement, he gave no reason for offering to resign but appeared to hit back at claims that he had governed in an aloof and authoritarian manner.

He said: “Peace being the supreme good, as we have entered this magnificent time of Easter, I have presented my resignation to the Holy Father, for whom I pray every day.”

“I have always acted as closely as possible to the law and to my conscience, having consulted extensively on each decision, in order to take difficult measures, but which I would have been reproached for not having taken later, in view of the elements in my possession. The penal implications of a certain number of cases fall within the jurisdiction of the judiciary.”

“For the rest, the pontifical secret, which we must respect, is the responsibility of the apostolic nuncio.”

Ravel added: “This concern for peace is combined in my heart with the concern for truth and justice that I have always sought with regard to priests, the faithful, and in particular the victims, whom I will never forget.”

“I believe that I have acted to resolve the problems in a spirit of transparency and respect for confidentiality.”

The Vatican did not refer to Ravel’s resignation in its April 20 daily bulletin, but it could be officially accepted by Pope Francis in the coming days.

The French Catholic weekly Famille chrétienne said that Ravel’s resignation, “demanded for several months by Rome, is expected to be ratified very quickly.”

Ravel, previously head of the Diocese of the French Armed Forces, was named Archbishop of Strasbourg in 2017. 

The archdiocese, which traces its roots to the 4th century and is exempt to the Holy See, is located in Alsace, a historically disputed region of eastern France bordering Germany. 

It has a distinctive status, thanks to the Concordat of 1801, according to which its archbishop is jointly appointed by the French president and the Vatican, and priests are paid by the state.

According to the French Catholic daily La Croix, which reported that Ravel’s resignation was imminent on April 19, the archdiocese is seen as “difficult to manage, given its 500 priests and 250 lay employees.” 

In June 2022, the apostolic nunciature in France announced an apostolic visitation of the archdiocese. It gave no reason, but local reports suggested it was triggered by complaints about Ravel’s governing style.

The results of the visitation have not been published, but tension increased significantly in the archdiocese in recent weeks. 

The regional newspaper Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace reported that on March 23, Strasbourg auxiliary Bishop Christian Kratz was informed that he had been removed from his post of vicar general. On March 30, he was reportedly told that he was also excluded from the bishop’s council.

Kratz told La Croix that he was given the news in a letter slipped under his office door. He said that Ravel indicated that the step followed Kratz’s alleged mishandling of abuse allegations that led to a former priest’s suicide.

Kratz defended his response to the case, saying: “I am stunned, I don’t understand what the archbishop is accusing me of. It’s unbelievable.”

Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace reported April 18 that Ravel had dismissed a second member of the bishops’ council, Fr. Hubert Schmitt.

Ravel didn’t attend the French bishops’ March 28-31 plenary assembly in Lourdes, reportedly for health reasons. 

The French bishops’ conference (CEF) issued a brief statement April 20 acknowledging that Ravel had submitted his resignation.

“In this trying time for all the Catholics of Alsace, the CEF wishes to assure Archbishop Ravel, the priests and all the faithful of the Archdiocese of Strasbourg, of its prayer and fraternal support,” it said.

Protesters gathered to demand Ravel’s resignation before the April 4 Chrism Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg.

A message beneath Ravel’s resignation statement on Strasbourg archdiocese’s website said: “Our diocese is going through a serious crisis that affects each of its members.” 

“Let us keep our eyes fixed on Christ, praying insistently to overcome the divisions, to work for the peace and unity that he wanted.”

Indian archdiocese makes marriage concession amid court battle

A parish in an Indian archdiocese established to serve a strictly endogamous community has taken the unprecedented step of permitting a member to marry a Catholic from another diocese.

The pastor of St. Anne’s Knanaya Catholic Church in Kottody, Kerala State, reportedly issued a letter of permission April 15 to 31-year-old Justin John, who was engaged two days later to Vijimol Shaji, a member of the Archdiocese of Tellicherry.

John, who plans to marry in mid-May, is a member of the Archeparchy of Kottayam, a unique ecclesiastical circumscription in southern India for members of the Knanaya ethnic group, who for almost 1,700 years have married exclusively within their community.

Knanaya men who marry Catholics outside the archeparchy are usually no longer regarded as members of the archeparchy and are expected to join a non-Knanaya parish.

Indian media described the granting of permission to John as a historic step that could signal the death knell for the archeparchy’s marriage rules.

In a March 30 letter to John, an official of the archeparchy said that ever since the Knanaya people migrated to southern India from Mesopotamia in 345 A.D. only those born to both a Knanaya mother and father were permitted to be members of Knanaya parishes.

The official recalled that the Archeparchy of Kottayam, which dates back to 1911, was founded exclusively for Knanaya Catholics. But he noted that the practice of limiting membership had been challenged in India’s civil courts. 

In April 2021, a district court in Kottayam declared that “by entering into the sacrament of marriage with another Catholic from any other diocese, a member of Archeparchy of Kottayam will not forfeit his/her membership in … the Archeparchy of Kottayam.”

Archbishop Mathew Moolakkatt, the head of Archeparchy of Kottayam, is seeking to overturn the ruling. In March this year, Kerala’s high court refused to lift the lower court’s order but agreed to hear an appeal against it. 

The archbishop has suggested that if a ban on forfeiting membership in the archeparchy is enforced, it could “destroy the ethnic identity of the community.” 

John told the website Matters India that after searching fruitlessly for a bride within the Knanaya community for five years, he decided to look in other Catholic dioceses.

His marriage to Shaji was arranged with the agreement of both families, but when John asked his pastor for a letter of permission, he was told to contact Archbishop Moolakkatt.

Unhappy with the response, John ultimately sent a legal notice saying that “any refusal to grant permission for my marriage is a clear violation of the court order and amounts to invitation of contempt of court case,” Matters India reported.

An archeparchy official told the website that “the permission was granted in compliance with court direction.”

Sources in the Knanaya Catholic community told The Pillar that the granting of permission to John did not indicate a wholesale change in the archeparchy’s marriage policy. 

They stressed that the archeparchy was obeying the court ruling while awaiting the opportunity to contest it.

Ukraine monastery embroiled in church-state standoff

Tensions between the Ukrainian government and the Moscow-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church remain high, after the termination of a lease agreement saw government forces attempt to evict the Church from an historic monastery in Kyiv shortly before Easter, leading to tense scenes during the liturgical feast, celebrated last Sunday in most Ukrainian Churches.

For decades, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) had held a lease from Ukraine’s government, giving it the use of large portions of the monastery complex at the National Kyiv-Cave Historical Cultural Preserve, part of a UNESCO world heritage site.

But in January, the government refused to renew the UOC-MP’s lease on the upper part of the monastery, which is known as the Lavra, or “Cave Monastery.” 

The Ukrainian Ministry of Culture instead offered a lease for the upper Lavra to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), the autocephalous Church recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople, but not Moscow. 

On March 29, the government moved to terminate the UOC-MP’s indefinite lease on the lower part of the  Lavra, and ordered UOC-MP monks to vacate the premises — which they refused to do, filing an appeal with the local courts. 

Matters escalated on April 1, when Ukrainian security services charged UOC-MP Abbot Pavlo Lebid with inciting religious hatred, and placed him under house arrest. 

April 16, the day on which both Eastern Orthodox Churches celebrated Easter this year, saw a heavy presence of Ukrainian security forces at the Lavra, who checked the identification of worshipers and conducted searches. 

While the UOC-MP remained in the lower level of the monastery, the OCU celebrated in the Lavra’s main level, the first time Easter had been celebrated by the Church in the monastery, and the first time the feast had been marked there with a liturgy in the Ukrainian language, rather than in Russian.

The tense Easter celebrations were the latest chapter in an emerging conflict between government forces and the UOC-MP,  after Ukrainian security services began alleging last year that UOC-MP clergy have spread pro-Moscow propaganda in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began last year.

The Ministry of Culture’s termination of the UOC-MP’s lease agreements at the Lavra has been widely seen as another step in restricting the activities of the Russian-affiliated church, after several representatives of the UOC-MP took part in October events in Moscow at which Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of some occupied Ukrainian territories. 

Immediately afterward, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine imposed sanctions on high-ranking ministers of the UOC-MP — some were charged with anti-Ukrainian activities and collaboration, and are now under investigation.

In November last year, government forces raided the Lavra and seized Russian passports, pro-Moscow literature, and $100,000 in cash. 

Raids at other UOC-MP monasteries have turned up what security services have called “books of xenophobic content with offensive fictions about other nationalities and religions.” 

“The pamphlets found deny Ukraine's right to independence and emphasize that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus ‘cannot be divided,” according to government briefings.

The notion that Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia are intractably unified under Moscow's leadership is part of the Russkiy-mir worldview espoused by Putin and endorsed by Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill, who has primacy over the Russian Orthodox Church and the affiliated UOC-MP.

The Russkiy-mir worldview holds that the “Russian world” covers almost the whole of Eastern Europe, and that Moscow has a historic right and obligation to exercise influence over the region.

It has formed part of the philosophical basis of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and been a central part of Russian propaganda emphasizing a claimed cultural and historic unity of Russian and Ukrainian people.

At the beginning of December, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a crackdown on the operation of Moscow-affiliated Orthodox churches in the country, promising bill in the legislature that would see Ukrainians face “personal, economic, and restrictive sanctions,” for continued religious activity overseen by Moscow. 

Complicating the issue is the position of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which has moved in to claim the premises previously occupied by the UOC-MP at the Lavra monastery. 

Since the beginning of 2023, the OCU has received permits to make use in the upper part of the monastery complex, most of which is occupied by a state museum. 

But the OCU has also called on the monks of the UOC-MP to move into a newly created Kyiv-Pechersk monastery of the OCU, and for them to elect a new abbot from among the members of their own community. To date, only one of them, Archimandrite Avraamiy Lotysh, has decided to take this step. 

In the meantime, state authorities have refrained from forcibly evicting the UOC-MP monks, and emphasized that the termination of their lease at the landmark site does not mean that the monastery will be liquidated.  

Officially on the sidelines of the dispute is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, but local leaders and lay faithful alike remain deeply invested in the standoff at one of the centers of the country’s Christian history and life. 

The Kyiv Cave Monastery has always been an important pilgrimage site not only for Orthodox Christians but also for Christians of every denomination in Ukraine. According to the head of the UGCC, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Ukrainian Greek Catholics, as citizens of Ukraine, are deeply invested in the future of the Lavra because it is “a common shrine of the Ukrainian people,” even if the Catholic community does not claim the right to hold services in its churches.

While Ukrainian Catholics report generally positive attitudes to restricting the activities of the UOC-MP in Ukraine, they also have reservations that as the UOC-MP is deprived of its privileged status, the OCU may take its place as a kind of de facto national Church, instead of a fair treatment of all Churches by the state.

According to Rev. Nazar Zatorsky, a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Eparchy of St. Volodymyr centered in Paris, who currently serves in UGCC parishes in Switzerland, today's tensions around the Lavra ultimately have roots in the unfair treatment of Christian denominations by the Ukrainian state authorities in the past.

“The UOC-MP presents the situation as if it is being expelled from its premises. In fact, the Kyiv Cave Monastery is owned by the state, and the UOC-MP had the monastery complex in its use only because the Ukrainian government had previously elevated it above other Ukrainian Churches in every way possible and granted it various advantages,” he told The Pillar.

According to Fr. Zatorsky, the situation changed after the appearance of the OCU on the religious map in 2018, and received official recognition of its status as an independent Orthodox Church from the Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019. 

Since then, according to Fr. Zatorsky, the state has shifted its institutional favor to the OCU over the UOC-MP, whose hierarchs have repeatedly demonstrated a pro-Russian position, in addition to ecclesiastical ties. 

“We are not talking about persecution here,” he told The Pillar, “but only the deprivation of preferences and the status of a semi-official state Church which [the UOC-MP] used to enjoy.”

“For the past 30 years, the UOC-MP has been a state-protected Church, which contributed to the spread of its network throughout Ukraine, and the hierarchs of the UOC-MP were quite satisfied with this situation.” 

“The real question now,” he said, “is whether the UOC-MP can exist in conditions of interdenominational competition, on a par with other denominations without state patronage.” 

“The aggressive protests of its hierarchs indicate that they themselves have serious doubts about this," said Zatorsky.

This assessment is shared by the Synkellos for Monastic Affairs of the Lviv Archeparchy of the UGCC, Fr. Justyn Boyko, MSU. 

According to Boyko, the UOC-MP has enjoyed special treatment from the state for many years. This included the transfer of the premises Lavra for the Church’s indefinite use when pro-Russian politician Mykola Azarov headed the Ukrainian government. 

At the same time, Fr. Boyko told The Pillar, the UOC-MP believed it could dispose of this property at its discretion. 

“They did whatever they wanted there. They violated everything that could be violated. Sooner or later, someone had to bring it all back to the legal system. It is quite good that we are talking about returning to the principle of equality of all churches before the state. From the state's point of view, I support these things,” said Boyko.

Boyko also says that, as far as he knows, the UOC-MP does not have nearly as many monks at the site as it has claimed. While the Church’s leadership have repeatedly stated that the monastery is home to about 200 monks, according to Fr. Boyko many are actually hired workers who have been given permission to wear monastic clothes during their stay in the monastery.

“It's almost impossible to distinguish who is a monk and who is not,” said Boyko. “This levels the whole idea of monasticism as such.” 

Though, he added, “with the monks who are there, monks in the true sense of the word, it will always be possible to find a way out of the situation. Because even though the Kyiv Cave Monastery will remain a museum, it is Ukraine's spiritual center, and prayer should continue there.” 

“But now, the time has come when it is vital to allow different denominations to pray at these holy places, including the Greek Catholic Church. It is also the Church of St. Volodymyr's baptism, and the Kyiv Cave Monastery is one of the centers of the spirituality of Kievan Rus,” he said. 

“We, as [Catholic] monks, also feel like heirs to this tradition of St. Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves, especially the Studite monks of the UGCC. Because the Studite charter was the charter of the Kyiv Cave Monastery.”

According to Fr. Boyko, the situation around the monastery is an inevitable result of an untenable position taken by the UOC-MP’s leadership 

“Why? Because when the Moscow Patriarchate supported Russia's war against Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate decided to sit back,” he explained. 

In May, the UOC-MP held a solemn governing meeting called a “sobor,” at which Church leaders eliminated all reference to Moscow in the Church’s governing statutes. But the move turned out to be mostly symbolic, as the UOC-MP’s laws which identified Moscow as the source of its communion with Orthodox Churches remained.

Boyko told The Pillar that “many priests and monks, and bishops, have cooperated with the occupiers. Society is not blind, and it sees this. And now society has taken this matter into its own hands.” 

Since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, dozens of Orthodox parishes in Ukraine have disaffiliated from hierarchy connected to Moscow, moving from the UOC-MP to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

“I hope that the healthy forces in this Church will come to their senses and finally respond to the call of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople to unite Orthodoxy in Ukraine,” Boyko said. 

“The leadership of the UOC-MP want to be seen as martyrs and confessors of the faith. But I am convinced that this is not their style at all. They fled from the Lavra, leaving ordinary monks and priests there. They are not ready to endure persecution, let alone live in poverty,” Boyko said. “These are people who are used to living in great luxury. They are shocked that they are losing their estates, not that they are losing a place of worship.”

For his part, Eduard Berdnyk, a Ph.D. candidate at the Ukrainian Catholic University, expressed reservations about the future of the Lavra to The Pillar. 

For Berdnyk, the loss of the UOC-MP’s monopoly position at the shrine raises questions about the monastery’s future form. 

“The UOC-MP, in my opinion, should not have this exclusive right, this monopoly on historical heritage, on historical shrines. Moreover, they used this property with numerous violations of the terms of the contract.” 

“But,” he said, “there is also a challenge here: How will it be realized now? Will it be transferred to another church on the same terms and according to the same principle, or not?”

Berdnyk said he doubts whether the activities of the UOC-MP can be banned in Ukraine for their connection with the Russian Orthodox Church, as this connection is part of their religious identity. Therefore, the state authorities' specific actions could qualify as religious persecution. 

To prevent that situation, Berdnyk believes, the state must emphasize that it is not an abstract spiritual connection with Russia that is the problem, but rather active collaboration. The state needs to identify and publicize specific examples of crimes committed by particular representatives of the Church in order to justify its actions.

“It is problematic that the UOC-MP is identified with its bishops, with its priests, and, accordingly, with collaboration. While this might seem understandable, it is a great simplification, which, even during the war, I wonder whether we can afford,” Berdnyk said.

“I would very much like the state to work on identifying collaborators, condemning specific cases, even investigating every bishop from the UOC-MP for collaboration. If there were such cases, I would like to see criminal proceedings and sentences passed. And from what I know, there were such cases. But I would like to see this hard work done by the state.”

Berdnyk was born and raised in Kryvyi Rih in eastern Ukraine, where the UOC-MP holds a dominant position. He said he also doubts that the activities of this Church can be restricted throughout the country. 

“Now in several western regions there are almost no active UOC-MP communities left,” he told The Pillar. “But if we talk, for example, about cities such as Kryvyi Rih, where the Moscow Patriarchate owns most of the parishes in the city and they remain the basis of the city's religious life and other denominations have few churches there, what can we do?"

Berdnyk is also critical of the OCU’s response to the state's actions against the UOC-MP. 

In his opinion, despite restrained statements of the OCU leadership at the lower level, there is a desire among its senior ranks to turn the situation to their advantage. 

“It seems to me that they are behaving the way the UOC-MP would behave if they were in the same position,” Berdnyk told The Pillar. “They are pushing the state to act. They behave like a mirror image. And these mirror actions are an attempt to make up for the previous years when everything was the other way around.” 

Ksenia Pidopryhora is a member of St. Demetrius parish in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, which joined the UGCC a few years ago and before that had been part of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

She told The Pillar that “As a trend, I like what is happening at the Kyiv Cave Monastery." 

“I don't understand why this did not happen at least from the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Given that the Lavra building never belonged to the Moscow Patriarchate, this should have been done long ago.”

On the other hand, Pidopryhora expressed surprise that the state seems to be handing effective control of the Lavra from one Orthodox Church to another.

"It is also strange that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has so quickly oriented itself and said, ‘Yes, this is our Lavra now because we are the most Orthodox of the Orthodox after the Russian Orthodox Church’” she said. 

“In my opinion, it would be necessary, first of all, to discuss all this with other Churches in Ukraine. I know that in Ukraine, there are joint meetings of all religious communities and Churches [ the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations].” 

“The fact that the OCU quickly created its own monastery there looks a bit like raiding,” Pidopryhora said. “It looks like pride and arrogance.” 

“I would like to see the Council of Churches of Ukraine discuss this, because if it belongs to the state, then perhaps different Churches and religious organizations in Ukraine could have services there,” Pidopryhora said. “If the state grants the right to lease, why can't it be a common shrine with more broad access? We do not have a state church.” 

“As a person who grew up with the UAOC and is now a Greek Catholic, I want unity. I do not yet see the same desire from my Orthodox friends,” said Pidopryhora. “But this could be a chance for a precedent where we could see how ready everyone is to negotiate and start creating this mutual understanding and trust right now.”

Vatican court rejects appeal over Indian Church land deals

The Church’s highest judicial authority has rejected an appeal to re-examine issues surrounding land deals that provoked uproar among Indian Catholics.

In a decree dated Jan. 31, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura dismissed the appeal concerning the proposed sale of two properties and the restitution of land losses sustained by the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly.

Ernakulam-Angamaly is the pre-eminent see of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, the second-largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome. The archeparchy’s head is Cardinal George Alencherry, the leader of the Syro-Malabar Church.

Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli, the apostolic nuncio to India, informed  Ernakulam-Angamaly’s apostolic administrator Archbishop Andrews Thazhath of the Apostolic Signatura’s decision in a letter dated April 3.

“As your Grace will see, the Supreme Tribunal, after carefully studying the case, has now decreed that ‘in matters already decided, let there be no reopening, and let this be informed to those concerned, with all the effect of law,’” Girelli wrote.

The decree is the latest twist in a long-running controversy over real estate transactions that lost the archeparchy in the southern Indian state of Kerala a reputed $10 million and led to proceedings in the country’s civil courts.

Critics have accused archeparchy officials of selling the land for far less than its estimated worth, and of mismanaging the Church’s assets at a time when the archeparchy was already struggling to pay back a large bank loan. 

The affair sparked outrage among the archeparchy’s priests, who demanded the removal of Cardinal Alencherry in a revolt known as the “Ernakulam priests’ rebellion.”

In June 2018, the Vatican appointed a temporary apostolic administrator who oversaw the archeparchy for a year. 

In August 2019, Pope Francis confirmed the election of Archbishop Antony Kariyil as the archiepiscopal vicar of Ernakulam-Angamaly, responsible for day-to-day administration.

Kariyil resigned in the midst of a liturgical crisis in the local Church in July 2022 and was succeeded by apostolic administrator Archbishop Thazhath.

Cardinal Alencherry, who has served as the Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Church since 2011, has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

According to an unsigned April 16 explanatory note circulating in the archeparchy, the Apostolic Signatura issued the decree in response to an appeal by local priests against a final decision on matters related to land sales issued in 2021 by the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, the Vatican department responsible for relations between Rome and the autonomous Syro-Malabar Church.

“That means, the observations and the decisions of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches remain upheld without prejudice to the civil court procedure,” the note said.

In March, India’s Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Alencherry to quash seven criminal cases against him relating to land deals. The ruling increased the likelihood of the cardinal facing trial over the cases.

The explanatory note said that the Apostolic Signatura’s decree paved the way for Church authorities to sell plots of land in the small Keralan settlements of Kottappady and Devikulam for the price approved by the Syro-Malabar Church’s Permanent Synod, which consists of five bishops including Alencherry, who is the body’s president.

“It is hoped that this decree of the Supreme Tribunal of Signatura Apostolica will clarify many of the doubts of the faithful, since a lot of false propaganda is being spread with the intentions of tarnishing the image of the Syro- Malabar Church and the Major Archbishop in public,” the note concluded. 

The Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly is also at the center of an ongoing liturgical dispute that has been marked by street brawls, hunger strikes, the burning of pastoral letters, the immolation of cardinals’ effigies, and the storming of church sanctuaries.

Former German bishops’ chairman faces ‘Vos estis’ probe

Former German bishops’ conference chairman Archbishop Robert Zollitsch is facing a Vatican investigation into claims that he covered up abuse.

Zollitsch was heavily criticized in a report published Tuesday on the handling of abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Freiburg, which he led from 2003 until his retirement in 2013.

Presenting the almost 600-page study at an April 18 press conference, independent commission chairman Magnus Striet estimated that there had been more than 250 possible perpetrators of abuse and at least 540 victims in the archdiocese in southwestern Germany since 1945. 

Archbishop Stephan Burger, who has led the archdiocese since 2014, said that his two immediate predecessors — Zollitsch and the late Archbishop Oskar Saier — had “simply ignored Church law that provided for intervention and reporting of cases.”

He said: “It stuns me because Dr. Oskar Saier was also a canon lawyer. Dr. Robert Zollitsch was a long-time personnel manager, became an archbishop, and then also became chairman of the German bishops’ conference. Both knew about the importance as well as the legal relevance of the issue.” 

“Behind this was an esprit de corps that, from today’s perspective, was misconceived. An external image of the Church was to be maintained, which rejected any misconduct. Added to this is the protection of institutions, which takes precedence over everything.”

Zollitsch released a nine-minute video last October acknowledging that he had mishandled abuse cases.

In the video, recorded on Aug. 31, 2022, he said that his “attitude and actions were guided far too much by the good of the Catholic Church and far too little by sympathy for the suffering of those affected and care for the victims.”

He added: “I believed the statements and promises of the perpetrators all too readily and wanted to give a second chance to those who had been guilty, repented of their behavior in conversation with me, and promised repentance.”

Zollitsch underlined that, while he worked closely with others in the archdiocese, “I am personally responsible for my behavior and expressly acknowledge my guilt.”

Archbishop Burger announced April 18 that canonical proceedings had begun against Zollitsch.

“As far as the assumption of responsibility by Archbishop Robert Zollitsch is concerned, I cannot speak for him. I can only refer to his statements published so far in the past, also to his statement which he put on his homepage yesterday,” Burger said.

The April 17 statement on Zollitsch’s personal website said that the retired archbishop would not be commenting on the report “out of consideration for the victims of sexualized violence.”

Burger continued: “Whether and in what form canonical consequences are still to be drawn is up to the judgment of the Apostolic See in Rome. The necessary measures for this have been initiated.”

Katholisch.de, the official website of the Catholic Church in Germany, said that a report had been submitted to Rome in accordance with the motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi, which Pope Francis updated last month.

Vos estis sets out the steps that Church leaders must take when investigating allegations of abuse or administrative negligence on the part of bishops.

In his statement, Burger noted that he had also made errors in the handling of abuse cases. 

“The report proves that I made mistakes,” the archbishop said. “The report points out that in some places I, as archbishop, have not been self-critical and consistent enough in documenting procedures or demanding that they be followed. In this regard, it is important for me to be even more careful when applying the applicable law in the future.”

Burger has served since September 2022 as deputy chairman of the German bishops’ specialist group on questions of sexual abuse.

Zollitsch was named archbishop of Freiburg, Germany’s second-largest diocese after Cologne, in 2003. He was portrayed by the media as a “liberal” while at the helm of the German bishops’ conference from 2008 to 2014. 

Zollitsch was head of the bishops’ conference in 2010, when the German Church was shaken by widespread revelations of clerical abuse. He discussed the crisis that year with Pope Benedict XVI in Rome. 

Pope Francis accepted Zollitsch’s resignation as archbishop of Freiburg in 2013, shortly after he turned 75.

Freiburg is the latest German diocese to publish an in-depth examination of its handling of abuse cases in the post-war period. Others include the Archdiocese of Cologne, the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, the Diocese of Münster, the Diocese of Osnabrück, the Diocese of Essen, and the Diocese of Mainz. 

The Mainz study, released in March, offered a scathing assessment of Cardinal Karl Lehmann, who led the diocese in west-central Germany from 1983 to 2016. The report said that the cardinal failed for decades to respond effectively to sexual abuse in the diocese.

Lehmann, considered one of Germany’s leading churchmen until his death in 2018, was president of the country’s bishops’ conference from 1987 to 2008. He was succeeded that year by Zollitsch.

Eucharistic pilgrimage expected to 'restrict' adoration in Chicago archdiocese

The Archdiocese of Chicago is expected to restrict the exposition of the Eucharist during a national Eucharistic pilgrimage that will traverse the Chicago region next year, ahead of the Eucharistic Congress scheduled for next July.

The anticipated restriction comes amid differences of emphasis and approach among U.S. bishops over the Church’s Eucharistic revival process, now underway, and the $14 million Eucharistic Congress planned for 2024 — especially over the revival’s emphasis on adoration of the Eucharist. 

While Cardinal Blase Cupich has argued that an emphasis on adoration could distract from catechesis about the importance of the Mass, Bishop Andrew Cozzens has stressed a unified vision between Eucharistic adoration and the worship of God in the Mass.

According to three senior Church officials close to the Eucharistic pilgrimage, the Chicago archdiocese has told organizers of the Eucharistic pilgrimage that, while pilgrims may travel through the archdiocese during their processional walk to Indianapolis, they are expected to reserve the Eucharist in a ciborium, rather than process with the Eucharist exposed in a monstrance, as the pilgrimage will do in other areas of the country. 

A source with knowledge of the pilgrimage planning said that when pilgrims traverse through  Chicago in the summer of 2024, the archdiocese will conduct a Mass at Holy Name Cathedral, followed by a Eucharistic procession led by Cardinal Cupich — but that the Eucharist will otherwise be expected to be reserved as pilgrims travel.

“He told them they could go through Chicago, but they couldn’t expose the Blessed Sacrament while they were walking. That seemed to be the compromise that they got about coming at all,” according to one senior Church official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

Other officials close to the Eucharistic pilgrimage confirmed that account.

The 2024 national Eucharistic Congress is sanctioned by the U.S. bishops’ conference, but organized by an independent nonprofit formed for just that purpose, whose board of directors is chaired by Bishop Andrew Cozzens. Five other bishops sit on the nonprofit's board, along with four laypeople.

While the Congress is expected to draw pilgrims from across the U.S., it will be preceded officially by four walking pilgrimages, organized by the Eucharistic Congress staff and by Modern Catholic Pilgrim, a San Diego based nonprofit with expertise in planning pilgrimages.

The four walking pilgrimages will begin in May 2024, commencing in San Francisco; at the tomb of Blessed Michael McGivney in New Haven, Connecticut; at the U.S.-Mexico border near Brownsville, Texas; and at the headwaters of the Mississippi River, in northwestern Minnesota.

They will conclude shortly before the Congress begins in Indianapolis next July.

Cozzens told The Pillar last year that the pilgrimages aim “to invite everyone; young people and whoever wants to pilgrimage with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament across the country from four sides of the country, praying and seeking their own deeper walk with Jesus, as we process the Blessed Sacrament towards Indianapolis.”

Each pilgrimage will be anchored by a team of young adults committed to walking most of the pilgrimage route to Indianapolis, while sleeping at churches along the way, and traveling with a support van for logistics. Catholics will be invited to accompany the pilgrimage teams as they make their way by foot to Indianapolis. 

Each team is expected to be accompanied by priests, many of them members of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

Cozzens explained that the teams will partner with local dioceses to undertake major processions — “with the canopy and cross and servers and people singing hymns and praying and things like that” as they pass through cities along their routes.

But for the “miles on miles” outside of such cities, the teams will normally undertake either “a simple walking procession — a priest or a deacon carrying the Blessed Sacrament and a simple monstrance, but without a canopy and people walking prayerfully,” or they will process using a specially designed electric vehicle meant for publicly viewable exposition and adoration of the Eucharist, with pilgrims walking behind and alongside the vehicle.

Cozzens explained that in “places where there’s hundreds of miles with no people — when we’re going across the desert of Nevada, for example … we might repose the Blessed Sacrament or at least prayerfully carry it in a van while we're going across the larger miles.”

But sources close to the pilgrimage told The Pillar that planners now expect they will also repose the Blessed Sacrament while walking through the Archdiocese of Chicago — after a decision on the matter from officials in the archdiocese.

Congress organizers declined to clarify directly their plans for the pilgrimage in the Archdiocese of Chicago, saying that the planning process is still underway.

In response to questions, Congress executive director Tim Glemkowski told The Pillar that: “The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage is working in close collaboration with staff in each of the 64 dioceses the pilgrimage route will pass [through].”

“Every segment of the pilgrimage will be a distinct experience of each local diocese that will highlight the holy sites, cultural experiences, and Eucharistic life of that local church. Each diocese is creatively engaged in the planning process to allow a unique experience of the pilgrimage throughout all four pilgrim routes,” Glemkowski added.

“The pilgrimage will be a powerful, once-in-a-lifetime witness of how Jesus Christ comes close to us and invites all to encounter him in the Eucharist. We could not be more excited to be moving forward with each of our diocesan partners in the planning and execution of this incredible opportunity for our Church in the U.S,“ he said