MikeLigalig.com

Pope Francis is also putting theory into practice.

Straight after his election in March, he symbolically shunned the red velvet mozetta preferred by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, in favor of a more modest white vestment, and can currently be spotted driving around the Vatican in a gifted second-hand, decades-old jalopy.

His intention is for the Roman Catholic Church to strip itself of all “vanity” and humbly become “a poor church for the poor.”

It’s a message that stands in stark contrast to the Bishop of Limburg, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, whose personal requests for lavish fixtures such as a $20,000 bathtub for his private residence drove the cost of the bishopric estate’s renovation up to $43 million – more than five times the original estimate.

Trying to escape the firestorm that the renovations ignited, Tebartz-van Elst boarded a budget airline to Rome on Oct. 13 in hopes of gaining an audience with the pope. For eight days, he waited in uncertainty. Then Francis saw him for 20 minutes on Oct. 21, only to suspend him indefinitely two days later.

It's not a strong enough response, some Germans say. “I think Tebartz-van Elst should have been stripped of his post. There’s no way he can ever be a role model again,” says Jeanny Müller, a Catholic from Munich.

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With all this money, the Catholic Church takes on more tasks than in many other countries. One in five hospitals is run by the Catholic Church, for example, as are many kindergartens, retirement homes, and the training of hundreds of priests in Latin America and Africa. Overall, this leads to the Catholic Church being one of Germany’s largest employers, with around 650,000 employees, according to the German Bishops Conference.

Still, these activities are financed with no more than 70 percent of the Church’s yearly intake, says Carsten Frerk, Germany’s foremost expert on church finances.

“It seems that between 50 to 60 percent of the annual intake goes toward paying employees’ salaries, and between 2 to 4 percent to charitable efforts. The church-run hospitals are entirely state-financed,” says Mr. Frerk, who has written two books on the German Catholic Churches’ wealth and their “opaque” bookkeeping.

Dioceses have now taken first steps to disclose those secret fortunes. But Frerk says the published numbers are “a joke.”

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LOSING LAITY

Christian Weisner, spokesperson for the German branch of the international church reformist movement "We Are Church," warns that the German Catholic Church needs to take serious steps, or it will continue to lose membership – currently estimated at 23 million.

Since the 1950s, a steady flow of members has quit their Church. Following the child-abuse scandal involving clergymen in 2010, that exodus swelled to 180,000. Although the rate has receded in years since (118,000 in 2012), latest forecasts place Christians in the minority in Germany by 2023.

“Attrition is not only due to religion becoming less central to people’s lives. It’s also because church officials are being trusted less,” Mr. Weisner says. He believes Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as Pope Francis was known while a cardinal, was elected precisely because the Catholic Church wanted to change course after the sexual abuse and Vatican bank scandals.

“People in the pews love Pope Francis and his Franciscan style. But especially in Germany, bishops are hindering reform and development like a layer of insulation between the pope and the public.”

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