Bishop praises Prime Minister for defence of the Cross

With the decree on the cross in Bavaria four years ago, Prime Minister Markus Söder triggered a controversial debate, also in the ecclesiastical sphere. 

Archbishop Ludwig Schick of Bamberg has words of praise for the initiative.

Four years after the so-called Bavarian Cross Decree, Archbishop Ludwig Schick of Bamberg has praised the order as a "good idea and initiative". The Cross can remind all people of peace and solidarity, Schick said in Hirschfeld on Sunday. "Looking at the Cross, we can be liberated from hatred and envy, strife and discord, violence and war, and become people of freedom, reconciliation and peace," Schick said. "In the cross we recognise that we are called to peace, in which there is salvation and life, whereas in war there is death and destruction, as well as that God wants peace and not war."

Four years ago, the installation of crosses in the entrance areas of all official buildings of the Free State, pushed for by Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU), had triggered a controversial echo, also in the arena of the churches. In June, the Bund für Geistesfreiheit (Association for Freedom of Thought), which is critical of the Church, failed with a complaint against the regulation before the Bavarian Administrative Court. At the same time, the organisation announced that it would continue the legal battle all the way to the Federal Constitutional Court.

Schick made his comments at the consecration of a peace cross in Hirschfeld in the Franconian Forest. Villagers and war returnees had erected such a cross for the first time in 1957. The Archbishop thanked the returnee community around Josef Förtsch, now 98 years old, as the last living contemporary witnesses in the village, for continuing the tradition. The new eight-metre tall cross made of steel is illuminated and, according to Förtsch, should be a memorial to the horrors of the two world wars for future generations. 

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Incredibly, Cardinal Marx was against the idea....