Directives to the German dioceses on the Pope’s recent Motu proprio, the Synod of Bishops in Rome, the Katholikentag planned to be held in Osnabrück in 2008, the debate on the sexual abuse perpetrated by religious, solidarity with the victims of the floods in Africa, and the position of the bishops on Turkey: these were just some of the issues discussed by the plenary assembly of German bishops, held at Fulda from 24 to 27 September. In the final statement, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, President of the Bishops’ Conference, summarized the bishops’ conclusions. In particular, on Turkey, following recent developments (victory of the governing party, new elections of the President and the announcement of the drafting of a new Constitution), the Bishops’ Conference declared it was awaiting a “resumption of the process of reform”, in which “the legitimate aspirations of the religious minorities would finally be satisfied in a way responding to the standards of a democratic state and the rule of law”. The bishops also express “dismay and irritation” about the sentence of Turkey’s supreme court, which on 13 June contested the right of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople to claim this honorary title which has been in use for centuries, and also refused to recognize the Patriarchate as a party at law. “We firmly reject” – says the statement – “the claim of a secular court to interfere in the internal questions of the Orthodox Church and to reject the right of the Patriarch of Constantinople to bear the title of ‘ecumenical patriarch’ after the long and well-consolidated tradition” of doing so. The bishops express “deep concern about the possible consequences of the sentence in consideration of the great restrictions with which the ecumenical patriarchate has to cope every day”: in this regard, the bishops hope for “the re-opening of the theological faculty of the patriarchate” in Chalki, closed since 1971, and “an end to the systematic expropriation of ecclesiastical buildings and lands”.
