General Secretary of German Bishops ambivalent about priestly ordinations

"I think it's wonderful when the Bishop lays his hand on the priest, but...."

DBK secretary-general Gilles finds priestly ordinations hard to do

She had not experienced clericalism for a long time, only when she came to the management level of a diocese as a department head, says DBK Secretary General Beate Gilles. Questions she asked, she says, were perceived as unseemly.

The Secretary General of the German Bishops' Conference (DBK), Beate Gilles, has ambivalent feelings about priestly ordinations and perceives some of them as clericalism. "I think it's wonderful when the bishop lays his hand on the priest, but when all the other priests do the same, I realise: that's a difference for me," she said in Leipzig on Monday evening. It is then a question of caste, who is allowed to do it and who is not. "And I realise that I find that very hard to bear at priestly ordinations, because for me it is also an exclusion."

She had not experienced clericalism for a long time, only when she became a department head in a diocese. It manifested itself mainly in the fact that questions she asked were perceived as unseemly, Gilles reported. When she now speaks about the German Synodal Way in international contexts, she also often experiences that it is perceived as unseemly how German Catholics speak to bishops.

"Now they always say that the women's question is important..."

Gilles went on to emphasise, "Now it is always said that the women's question is important - I believe that too, but I realise: I don't want to be a question any more. I am part of the answer and I am there." She was speaking at an international hybrid conference on "God's Strong Daughters", organised by the Catholic Academy of the Diocese of Dresden-Meissen.

In her current role as secretary-general, she said, she was not part of the bishops' conference but ran the organisation that supported the bishops. "It is totally fine for me if I then sit somewhere on the sidelines. But I notice that people think about it - much more than I do," Gilles said. She herself sees it more as an opportunity, because as a woman she makes something visible in pictures, for example. "That was not possible for my predecessor - he was simply a cleric among clerics," Gilles said. "I always think to myself: I'll be there and I'll be different. And that works well with the bishops. It's not a problem for them at all." In July 2021, Gilles became the first woman to assume the office of Secretary General of the German Bishops' Conference.

She could not be Secretary General of the Bishops' Conference if she constantly felt within herself the desire to be in priestly ministry. "I don't know how my life would have gone if there had been the possibility of ordination. But it is not something I suffer from every day. And it's the only way that I'm in this position now," Gilles stressed. But she hoped that women in church leadership positions would keep the wider question of access to ordained ministry moving.

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