Head of German Bishops calls Pope's church leadership "extremely questionable"

The dispute with the Vatican over the Synodal Path is intensifying. The Head of the German Bishops' Conference is particularly irritated that Pope Francis is giving interviews on the subject - instead of talking directly to the bishops.

Bishop Georg Bätzing: "No direct channel of communication" with the Pope.

The chairman of the Catholic German Bishops' Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, has criticised Pope Francis in clear terms. This followed an interview in which the head of the Catholic Church had clearly rejected the reform process Synodal Path. "I consider this way of perceiving church leadership through interviews to be extremely questionable," Bishop Bätzing of Limburg now told the newspaper "Die Welt" .

Bätzing referred to the recent visit of the bishops to the Vatican in November. "Why didn't the Pope talk to us about this when we were with him in November?" he said. There had been the opportunity, he said, but he had not taken it. Francis had described the Synodal Path, in which clergy and laity of the German Church discuss reform projects, to the AP news agency as an ideological project of elites.

In addition, Bätzing said that he could not understand why Francis had cited the dispute over celibacy as an example of an alleged German ideology. Whether celibacy should remain obligatory is a question that has been discussed for 60 years. The Pope himself had allowed this debate at the Amazon Synod of the Catholic Church there. "To call this an ideological debate now - what is that?"

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