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	German Bishops Involved in Some Seedy Business By Guido Horst Vatican Insider November 15, 2011 http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/world-news/detail/articolo/germania-germanyalemania-chiesa-church-iglesia-9907/ Controversy erupts over a company owned by German Bishops which sells erotic books. The Church has begun a cleanup but there is still a long way to go Bit by bit, even in those circles closest to the Pope, and within the Secretariat of the Vatican State, thoughts and concerns have begun to run rampant: for some time, it has been common knowledge that the Augusta "Weltbild" company, 100% owned by German bishops, is the leading bookseller in Germany and, in terms of on-line sales, it ranks second on the German market, after Amazon. The turnover of the chain of the German bishops' bookshops is around 1.7 billion Euros. But the Pope's entourage is not rejoicing about this at all. Indeed, it knows full well that "Weltbild" has no Catholic aims or inspirations and that, being a colossus among collossi, it sells all that the big operators in the sector offer on-line, including esoteric material, Buddhist literature, even Satanism and eroticism. One can find more that 2000 literary articles, or in other words books on eroticism, and more than 4000 on esoteric subjects. The members of the "Weltbild" board include representatives from twelve German Catholic dioceses and the "Verband der Diözesen Deutschlands" (VDD or the Association of German Dioceses). The latter is a consortium of all the German episcopates, established to oversee mutual matters of law and finance. Shareholders of the "Weltbild" company include the Dioceses of Trier, Aachen, Bamburg, Eichstätt, Fulda, Freiburg, Münster, Passau, Regensburg, Trier and Würzburg and the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. The largest shareholdings are in the hands of, amongst others, the Association of German Dioceses (24.2%), the Archbishopric of Munich and Freising (13.2%) and the Diocese of Trier (11.7%). However, all German bishops are in fact co-owners of "Weltbild", through their membership in the Association of German Dioceses.
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