Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

Germany’s Heiner Wilmer, who is widely considered a “Francis bishop”, says the pope wants to “turn the Church on its head.”
German Bishop Heiner Wilmer, who is reportedly close to Pope Francis, has claimed that the Catholic Church has “utterly gambled away” people’s trust in the institution by the way it has mishandled the clergy sex abuse crisis.

“Protecting the institution and the perpetrators was always the most important factor for the Church. (Protecting) the victims, on the other hand, simply did not occur,” said the 60-year-old Bishop Wilmer, head of the northern German Diocese of Hildesheim.
He made his remarks to some 200 representatives of religious, social and political groups who were gathered for an annual diocesan-sponsored reception in Hannover.

The bishop was filling in for Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who had to cancel his participation after he tested positive for the coronavirus.
Wilmer, whose address was titled “SOS – It is no less a matter of saving our souls”, warned that the Catholic Church would no longer be able to play a dominant role in society.

Church must re-discover its Biblical roots

“The Church as an institution will shrink and will be far more modest. It will just be one voice among many offering to explain the sense of life on earth,” he said.

“While it will be smaller, it will be ecumenical. Our faith will cover a smaller area but will grow in depth and in its Biblical roots,” he predicted.

Heiner Wilmer was completing his third year as the worldwide superior general of the Dehonians (Priests of the Sacred Heart) in 2018 when the pope picked him to be bishop of Hildesheim.

And many in Germany say the former head of the Dehonians is truly “a Francis bishop”.

He concentrated on three key questions during his address in Hannover: How much say do bishops still have today? What are people looking for? And are the Churches still of any use today?

Used car salesmen are more trusted than bishops

Bishop Wilmer said the times when bishops could treat people condescendingly “from above” in a patronizing way, “let alone consider themselves above the law”, are now over.

“Nowadays, people trust a used car salesman more than they do a bishop,” he said.

At the same time, he argued, people are more than ever looking for orientation and stability. He said the coronavirus pandemic and climate change had exacerbated this feeling of being lost.

But the bishop lamented that at the very moment people were looking for a point of reference, the Catholic Church was facing a pile of ruins.

However, he acknowledge that there was still a demand for the Church to act as a mediator and bridge-builder when interests clashed on ecological or social matters.

A new view of sexuality and priesthood

When Bishop Wilmer opened the diocesan phase of synodal process on October 23 he told Catholics of Hildesheim that the pope wanted “to turn the Church on its head”.

The bishop went on to insist that the distribution of power within the Church must change.

“There must be an end to above and below in the usual clerical manner,” Wilmer emphasized.

“A new view of sexuality is called for and we must think again about the role of the priesthood,” he said. “We need gender-just participation in the Church.”

Christa Pongratz-Lippitt writes from Vienna where she has spent many years as a reporter and commentator on Church affairs in the German-speaking world.