To forge links with the inhabitants of the countries occupied by Nazism, not to forget and to help in the building of a world of peace, so that the violence of the past be not repeated: that is how Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Episcopal Conference, summed up the work of the “Fund of reconciliation of the Catholic Church in Germany”, in reporting on the Fund’s activities and projects a year after its establishment. According to the press release issued in recent days by the German Episcopal Conference and reiterated by its president in his meeting with journalists in Mainz, the Fund derives its origin from the time of the dictatorship and the war against National Socialism and testifies to the commitment of the Catholic Church “which for decades has represented a kind of ‘vanguard of reconciliation’, since she has not only thought of her own victims but has always tried to support and at the same time alleviate the moral burden that weighs on the German people”. Inaugurated in the summer of 2000 to compensate the victims of forced labour in Catholic institutions during the Nazi regime, the Fund is divided into two parts: the “Solidarity Fund” and the “Compensation Fund”. Each has assets of 5 million DM. The two funds are complementary. “If compensation has a retrospective character”, the cardinal explained, by compensating those individuals who were forced to work in Catholic institutions, “the task of reconciliation is prospective and continuous”. The organization Renovabis, which works on behalf of the German Episcopal Conference in promoting solidarity with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, has the task of implementing the Fund’s projects and, Lehmann continues, “so far 40 have been authorized for an overall amount of approximately 1.9 million marks”. P.C.
