Cardinal rejects favouring Christian refugees and wants no limits placed on asylum seekers

Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Rainer Woelki, accuses the CSU of creating a split in society. With their demands for limits on refugees or a preference for immigrants from the Western Christian culture the party contributes to even greater polarization and is in the same business of the right-wing populists of the AFD. "I do not think much of parroting afterwards what others have thought about wrongly beforehard," Woelki told the "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger".

The Cardinal celebrated the Corpus Christi Mass 

this year on a model of a refugee boat

A preference for Christian refugees, as the CSU discussed at their executive meeting this weekend, would be "exactly the opposite of what we must be concerned about as Christians: creating spaces for encounter and to know each other".

"We now need clear, reliable rules for immigration in the future," said CSU leader Horst Seehofer.

Seehofer: "Without limitation, we will not make it"

The Archbishop called on the CSU to be loyal to the German constitution. "If the CSU accepts the basic law seriously, they cannot support an upper limit. This does not allow the right of asylum. And the right of asylum must remain as it is. "Therefore, according Woelki, "the nonsensical discussion of limits must stop. "

AfD does not deserve the label "Christian"

He warned the CSU also from assuming they could benefit from a policy and rhetoric of agitation. "Who wants what the CSU touted votes in the end equally for the AFD. They will have the last laugh."

In a joint reception of the Archdiocese and the Diocesan Council of Catholics, the laity representation in the archdiocese, Woelki considered the result of the state elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern a week ago with 21 percent of the vote for the AFD as "terrible" and as a "disturbing challenge". He disputed the label “Christian” for the right-wing populist party and the positions that they take.

"Christians do not discriminate according to origin, race or religion, but recognize in every human being the image of God." Whoever wants to defend the "Christian-Western tradition," should give space to the values of the Constitution and provide for the human dignity of each individual the Cardinal continued. He called for the social consensus to be respected, which the populists of right and left threatened to squander with their slogans. "The language is brutalized language. It is argued and lived at the cost of others.

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