A hundred homosexual Catholics, priests or involved in their parish, came out together on Monday in Germany. These 125 people wish to denounce the “discriminatory” policy of the Church in their country.
These priests, salaried theology teachers of the Church or practicing Catholics have revealed their homosexuality on the dedicated site “#OutInChurch”. Neither “sexual orientation or gender identity”, nor “commitment to a non-heterosexual relationship or marriage” should be “an obstacle to hiring or a reason for dismissal”, they believe in a manifest.
“Everyone is silent”
The 125 signatories demand a change in the Labor Code of the Catholic Church, with the removal of “degrading and excluding wordings” in the regulations. They want to put an end to a “system of concealment, double morality and dishonesty”.
The Protestant and Catholic Churches employ 1.3 million people in Germany and thus represent the second largest employer in the country after the public service. “I am gay and no one knows it”, confides a priest, chaplain in a prison, to the magazine Picture. “Everyone is silent, everyone is looking elsewhere. […] We are so many and the Church does not want to see it. »
Two women, a former director of a Caritas center and a professor of theology, concealed their relationship for forty years for fear of losing their jobs. They came out on Monday, two years after their secret marriage. The signatories received the support of the Archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Hesse.
New child crime cases
The LGBT+ issue is hotly debated in the Church. Pope Francis follows the Catholic tradition on marriage (union between a man and a woman with a view to procreation) and has repeatedly criticized gender theory, described as an “ideological project”. A note from the Vatican considering homosexuality a “sin” was approved in March 2021 by the sovereign pontiff.
A few days earlier, new accusations against the German Church in pedocrime cases surfaced. An independent report has implicated senior dignitaries, including former Pope Benedict XVI accused of inaction against pedophile priests in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The pope emeritus admitted on Monday to having concealed suspicion of sexual assault on minors.