Fired by letter under door from Cardinal

His organisational talent, coupled with his assertiveness, finally seemed to carry the clergyman all the way to the top. Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schönborn made him Vicar General and thus head of the diocesan administration. But the pastor was already an uncomfortable spirit back then. He turned structures upside down, cut priests' salaries and regulated the handling of sexual violence. That's not the only way to make friends. The cardinal dismissed him without much ado. The letter of dismissal was left on Schüller's doorstep at night in 1999.

From then on, he was only the simple parish priest of Probstdorf, a small village in the flat countryside about 25 kilometres east of Vienna. A banishment? - that is only half the truth. The clergyman did not give up the parish even during his time as Vicar General. He wanted to keep his feet on the ground. So in the evenings, Schüller pulled the letters out of the letterbox that the Ordinariate had sent to his parish priests: "Then I shook my head at what they come up with at headquarters."

Schüller gives many hope for an end to their suffering

The unpretentious, highly educated man sees the main cause of the church's misery in the bishops' recklessness, in the independent life of the Vatican, which is dominated by conservative forces. "Many bishops, after all, are circling on their own career. They no longer understand the needs of the people," says the theologian. A vivid example of his thesis sits at the parish café after the Sunday service in the old primary schools of Oberhausen, which belongs to Probstdorf. The bus driver, Katharina Peck has brought her fiancé. Her mother is a sacristan, she herself was an altar server for a long time. Now the 40-year-old blonde suffers from the strict church rules. She is not allowed to marry her partner in the Catholic Church. That is no longer in keeping with the times, Peck complains.

Like Katharina Peck, many hope for change. Schüller too. Not only because, according to surveys, three quarters of pastors share his concerns. But also because the church leadership does not know how to curb the dissenters. The calls for order have fizzled out. Throwing out all the rebels is not an option in times of priest shortage. The only option is to sit it out. But Schüller thinks that is unlikely. If only two or three bishops found the courage to join the movement, everything would slide. "That can happen every hour," says the theologian. He sees a situation in the Church like that of the fall in Communism in the GDR: "At the beginning of 1989, no one believed that the Wall would fall at the end of 1989 either."

The echo is of course due to the irritant word "disobedience" in the title of the pastor's paper. A deliberate provocation, a PR genius prank? Schüller, when asked about it, shakes his head and smiles at the irony of the story. "In reality, we urgently need tutoring for our media work." Actually, the initiative had planned a "Pentecost appeal". But they didn't finish it in time for the holiday and needed a new headline. So disobedience came into the title. Then the pious men put the paper on the internet. It would probably have sunk there if the conservative portal gloria.tv, which operates from Moldova, had not indignantly taken up the theses. "Our opponents helped us," says Schüller.

Because the problems are the same everywhere in the West, because priests are lacking everywhere, the number of faithful is dwindling and the majority at the grassroots rejects the Vatican's retro course, the wave of protest is spreading. In Belgium, Ireland, France and Australia, theologians have joined the Austrians. One of the pastors' initiative has just been to the founding of an offshoot in the USA. "He received a lot of sympathy there," says Schüller. There are similar alliances in Passau, Rottenburg and Würzburg. In Freiburg, priests are also quietly resisting, but can still be calmed down with talks. For Schüller, however, the time for talking is over. He demands consequences. "Our patience has run out. The dialogue events are just monologues by the bishops with the right to interrupt."

He was already manager of the year

Schüller is now 59 years old. The Lower Austrian has been a priest for 35 years. He sometimes looks a little tired out of his pale blue eyes. A hint of resignation seems to cross his face then, but the clergyman's energy is far from exhausted. His hands-on manner enabled the son of a lawyer, who comes from a devout family, to climb the ecclesiastical career ladder early on. In the early 1990s, he was Caritas president and organised aid for refugees from the Balkans. This earned Schüller the title "Manager of the Year", but also made him the addressee of a letter bomb from a right-wing extremist. Fortunately, the explosive device was defused in time.

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