Bishop’s Suspension a Symptom of German Catholic Church’s Wealth

By Nele Mailin Obermueller And Jabeen Bhatti
Salt Lake Tribune
October 23, 2013

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifestyle/57035346-80/church-german-catholic-elst.html.csp

People watch the residence of Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, Bishop of Limburg, in Limburg, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. Bishop Tebartz-van Elst, currently at the Vatican to meet pope Francis, is accused of wasting money to refurbish and rebuild the residence for more than 31 million euro ( 42 million dollar). (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Berlin • The $20,000 bathtub and $482,000 walk-in closets ordered by "Bishop Bling-Bling" — the moniker of Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, the now-suspended bishop of Limburg — have scandalized the German public.

But Tebartz-van Elst, 52, is only the latest German clergyman to run into trouble since Pope Francis took the helm of the Roman Catholic Church. Francis temporarily suspended the bishop on Wednesday while a church commission investigates the expenditures on the $42 million residence complex.

As the new pontiff tries to reform the way the church does business, German dioceses, which reportedly include the world’s wealthiest in Cologne, are chafing under the new direction as membership numbers continue to dwindle.

"Tebartz-van Elst is just the tip of the iceberg," said Christian Weisner, spokesman for the German branch of We Are Church, an organization advocating Catholic Church reform. "There is a real clash of cultures between Germany’s current cardinals and bishops — nominated under John Paul II or Benedict XVI — and Pope Francis."

Since becoming pope, Francis has repeatedly urged the church to strip itself of all "vanity, arrogance and pride" and humbly serve the poorest in society. Under Francis, priests living in luxury are no longer merely unseemly, but a scandal.

Still, even as Francis drives around Vatican City in a 20-year-old white Renault clunker gifted by an Italian priest, the head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, balked at the idea of giving up his company car, a BMW 740d.

"To me that car is not a status symbol, it is the office I use when I am traveling," Zollitsch said at a press event in early October, when asked whether he would trade it down.

In Germany, most of the church’s top officials drive high-powered Mercedes, BMWs or Audis.

Other German clergymen have been chastised for lavish expenditures. Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich’s archdiocese spent around $11 million renovating the archbishop’s residence and another $13 million for a guesthouse in Rome.

Still, for German Catholics, those luxuries pale in comparison to the current case surrounding Tebartz-van Elst and the renovation of his residence in Limburg, which is close to Frankfurt. Originally, the refurbishment of the estate’s 10 buildings had been slated to cost $7.5 million but it ballooned to almost six times that amount because of extravagances such as expensive fixtures.