The German Bishops’ Conference is to hold a solemn ceremony at Mainz on 12 November to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the “Anwerbervertrag”, the accord between Germany and Italy on the sending of Italian manpower to Germany to help in the reconstruction. The press release issued by the Bishops’ Conference in recent days announces the presence at the ceremony of numerous representatives of the ecclesiastical and political world of the two countries: apart from Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, the event will be attended by Bishop Josef Voss, chairman of the Commission for Migrants, and the archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, as representative of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. The political representatives are expected to include the Italian government minister Mirko Tremaglia, the Italian ambassador in Germany, Antonio Puri Purini, the President of the Land Rhineland-Palatinate, Kurt Beck, and the President of German Caritas, Bishop Peter Neher. The event will commemorate the signing of the Anwerbervertrag in Rome on 12 November 1955, by which the emigration of the first 100,000 Italian workers in Germany was regulated. The Anwerbervertrag with Italy was the first of a number of accords subsequently reached with other countries to accept foreign workers in Germany. Right from the start of this emigration, recalls the German Bishops’ Conference, “the German Catholic Church pledged to assist immigrants in various ways: from counselling on German labour law to the establishment of language groups for immigrants and the offer of spiritual assistance” to foreign workers.
