Society – 131 Catholic churches closed in five years
Over the past five years, 131 Catholic churches have been closed in the country. According to German Bishops’ Conference (DBK), 126 of them were also consecrated. The buildings were then officially dedicated.
At the end of the year, a church will be desecrated for the first time in recent memory. Archdiocese of Munich and Freising: On December 30, the Church of St. Benedict in Sheftlarn will be desecrated in Ebenhausen – with a mass followed by a candlelight procession.
The reason is cost. “The building’s asbestos-containing roof and damp finish will require repairs that are unaffordable less than 60 years after dedication,” the archdiocese wrote. “The profanation of the Church of St. Benedict has already been decided and is inevitable.” According to a spokesman for the diocese, it is not yet clear what will happen to the building after it is dedicated.
This is an unusual step for the still relatively wealthy Munich diocese. St. Benedict’s Church is reportedly the first in recent memory to be desecrated without the building being replaced.
IN Munich the Augustinian church was consecrated at the beginning of the 19th century, and the Carmelite church and the Allerheiligenhof church in the Munich residence have not been used as churches since the end of the war due to widespread military destruction.
According to a survey conducted by the German Press Agency among the Catholic dioceses of Bavaria, some churches were closed this year: In the diocese of Würzburg, these were two small churches in Rüdenhausen and Sommerhausen. In the diocese of Eichstätt, the Church of St. Monica in Ingolstadt was desecrated.
According to a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Bamberg, “not even a dozen churches have been sold or transferred” in the last 10 to 15 years. “This is extremely small and shows that consecrated churches are only disposed of in very exceptional cases,” the spokesman said.
Desecration occurred only in rare cases, because the churches in question were usually transferred to other Christian denominations, such as the Orthodox.”
The closures did not only affect Catholic churches: According to the Protestant regional church, 13 Protestant churches have also been consecrated in Bavaria since 2019.
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Source: www.stern.de
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