A woman pope? Meet the feminists trying to save the Catholic Church

Fulda, Germany — Ulrike Knobbe, a 65-year-old lifelong churchgoer, had by no means considered herself as a feminist. “I used to be even in opposition to feminists for a very long time,” she says with a large gap-toothed smile.

And but right here she is: Microphone in hand, carrying an enormous billboard emblazoned with calls for for gender equality, at a rally of principally gray-haired ladies singing alongside — at full pelt — to protest music.

The protesters maintain indicators with slogans reminiscent of “Identical dignities, similar rights,” “Girls, what are you ready for?” and “For a church with ladies.”

Many carry pink cardboard crosses. Nearly everyone seems to be carrying a rainbow masks. One girl dressed as a clown sends a stream of large bubbles into the air.

This demonstration within the German cathedral city of Fulda was organized by Maria 2.0 — a Catholic ladies’s motion calling for equality and a radical overhaul of the church.

The grassroots motion has greater than 65 branches throughout the nation. Its goals embody the ordination of girls, recognition of LGBTQ relationships, the abolition of obligatory celibacy guidelines for members of the clergy and correct investigations into allegations of sexual violence.

It was shaped by a handful of girls in Münster, northern Germany, two years in the past within the wake of sexual abuse scandals that rocked the nation and eroded a Catholic membership that numbers greater than 22 million people.

“Individuals had been very offended,” says Angelika Fromm, a 70-year-old Maria 2.0 member, of the scandals. “And lots of people have left the church due to this.”

She is certainly one of roughly 200 demonstrators who gathered in Fulda final month, zipping across the picturesque city in her mobility scooter handing out whistles and flyers.

It was the third time the group protested right here; winding their means round cobblestone streets to the magnificent cathedral the place dozens of bishops from throughout the nation had gathered for the German Bishops’ Convention.

All through the three-day occasion, scores of clergymen in distinctive collars pour into the city a lot as they’ve carried out for hundreds of years. Even the pedestrian crossings right here characteristic blinking photos of bishops.

Within the Catholic world, Germany’s nationwide department is without doubt one of the richest and strongest.

It earns greater than €6 billion ($6.96 billion) yearly from a “church tax” of its members and donates thousands and thousands of {dollars} in support globally.

However latest scandals — together with a 2018 report that discovered clerics had sexually abused greater than 3,600 youngsters between 1946 and 2014 — have accelerated the German church’s decline, divided its management and sparked protest actions from lifelong members.

The variety of Germans quitting the Catholic Church has been rising for many years, however a report 272,771 left in 2019, the 12 months after the publication of the sexual abuse report.

Germany just isn’t alone, with Catholic Church buildings worldwide — together with within the US, Eire and Australia — rocked by investigations shedding gentle on decades-long abuse. In France, a damning report revealed earlier this month discovered an estimated 216,000 youngsters had been abused by Catholic clergy between 1950 and 2020 — accounting for near 4% of all sexual violence within the nation.

Many individuals are turning their backs on Catholicism altogether on account of these disclosures.

However the members of Maria 2.0 are preventing to modernize the church as a substitute, calling for energy to be shared equally.

Within the Catholic Church, solely males can develop into clergymen and bishops — they usually should stay single and celibate.

Maria 2.0 members see this as an outdated construction in drastic want of a full overhaul.

“There are solely males deciding, solely males having accountability, and we wish it shared by women and men,” says Knobbe. “The feminine means of organizing and managing the church could be completely different to what solely males do.”

When requested if a future pope could possibly be a lady, a handful of members nod in settlement: “Sure,” they are saying. “Why not?”

Whereas it’s largely a feminine motion, Maria 2.0 additionally has some male backers – many on the Fulda protest had been the husbands of feminine demonstrators.

Every girl has her personal causes for becoming a member of the motion. Some, like Fromm, are long-time campaigners for gender equality within the church.

The soft-spoken activist was born in 1951, right into a deeply Catholic household within the former communist German Democratic Republic, the place faith was repressed.

Her household later fled to the then West Germany. On the age of 20, Fromm married a former priest and had three youngsters. The couple are actually divorced.

Fromm says she “practically misplaced my religion” within the Nineteen Seventies after listening to tales of girls getting pregnant by clergymen and being pressured to journey overseas for abortions. However she continued learning feminist theology, and within the Nineties co-founded the group Girls’s Ordination Worldwide.

Now identified with most cancers and barely in a position to stroll, Fromm says: “I don’t assume I’ll dwell to see change.”

Others, reminiscent of Mechthild Exner-Herforth, had been impressed to start out campaigning later in life.

The 58-year-old co-organizer of the Fulda demonstration had a conventional Catholic upbringing. It was solely when she grew to become concerned within the church once more, after a high-flying profession, that she was struck by its deep inequality.

“I used to be the primary girl in a giant administration workforce at European degree … and actually loved this freedom of getting type of equal rights,” Exner-Herforth says. “Then once I bought older, I began to interact myself in church and I believed it might be the identical,” she provides with a chuckle.

As a substitute, Exner-Herforth grew to become fed up with ladies being informed they couldn’t maintain the identical positions as males. “I’m completely satisfied that if the church desires to outlive, they’ve to alter,” she says.

Not all Catholic ladies take that view. The group Maria 1.0 was shaped in 2019 as a countermovement to Maria 2.0. It says it goals “to offer Catholic doctrine a voice.”

“We consider that Mary doesn’t want an replace,” wrote Clara Steinbrecher, the 23-year-old head of Maria 1.0, in an e mail interview with CNN. “As a substitute, we stand for the unique teachings of the Catholic Church, our mom.”

The group has 3,500 members, based in Germany but in addition unfold throughout Austria and Switzerland, stated Steinbrecher, who’s learning math and psychology at a Catholic college.

She stated that Maria 2.0’s strategies, reminiscent of boycotting church companies had been “bewildering, intrusive and never very Christian,” including that “a lot of the initiative’s content material is anti-church, since they wish to see unchangeable beliefs modified.”

As a substitute, Steinbrecher stated “actual reforms emanate from … naming actual deficiencies,” such because the “insufficient coaching of candidates for priesthood.”

On the difficulty of sexual abuse, Steinbrecher stated the Catholic Church “has already carried out rather a lot to fight sexual abuse inside its ranks,” however added that “there may be nonetheless work to do and wounds want time to heal.”

In Fulda, visiting bishops keep within the city’s baroque palace, its entrance lined with sculptured shrubs and vibrantly coloured flowers.

Exterior there’s one other eye-catching sight. A large sculpture of a priest dozing in a hammock suspended by damaged crosses, with the phrases: “11 years relentlessly coming to phrases with circumstances of abuse.”

The sculpture is the work of German artist Jacques Tilly, whose outsized caricatures of world leaders — from a child Donald Trump ripping up local weather agreements to a multi-headed Boris Johnson Brexit monster — often adorn political parade floats.

Close by, campaigners from sexual abuse help teams hand out flyers to passers-by and attempt to get the eye of members of the clergy as they hurry previous.

Jens Windel, one of many protesters, informed CNN he was abused by a priest over a two 12 months interval, starting when he was 9.

“The trauma doesn’t cease, as a result of there’s no finish to the abuse,” says Windel, now 47, squinting into the intense noon solar. “The church has not carried out sufficient to deliver an finish to it.”

Windel based a support group for victims of abuse in Hildesheim, northern Germany, and has come to the Fulda bishops’ convention yearly since 2015.

He’s skeptical of Maria 2.0’s rhetoric on sexual abuse, fearing that the ladies are “misusing it for his or her goal.”

However Windel says that whereas the motion is “not linked to sexual abuse,” he’s broadly supportive of its goals, since he “feels that girls ought to be equal with males.”

Different marketing campaign teams see their trigger as extra carefully aligned with Maria 2.0.

Thomas Pöschl is a member of the HuK help group for homosexuals within the church and has come to Fulda to hitch the Maria 2.0 rally.

The 60-year-old holds an enormous rainbow banner alongside his husband Thomas Herold. They had been married in what they jokingly name a “forbidden service” in 2003 by a renegade priest in Frankfurt who was supportive of their union.

“The church can’t go on as it’s, as a result of individuals are leaving,” says Pöschl. “They’re to date faraway from individuals’s lives, that they’re not in a position to inform individuals what to do.”

Although state and church are formally separated in Germany, in actuality issues are much less clear reduce. Non secular instruction is a part of the state college curriculum and church buildings maintain seats on numerous supervisory boards — starting from public broadcasting to commerce unions.

However the church is more and more considered “an authoritarian, outdated establishment,” says Detlef Pollack, professor of the sociology of faith at Münster College. “And that’s additionally a purpose why individuals depart.”

The nation’s church tax — amounting to between 8% and 9% of members’ earnings tax invoice — is one other deterrent.

In late 2019, German Catholics launched the Synodal Path project in an effort to revive confidence within the church. It includes lots of of lay members, lecturers, clergy and bishops debating what stay taboo topics for a lot of — together with lifting celibacy guidelines and permitting ladies to play greater roles in ecclesiastical life.

The challenge is because of wrap up in 2023, although its outcomes won’t change Catholic doctrine.

These debates round modernizing the German church have attracted criticism from the Vatican, nevertheless. A few of its most senior officers, including Pope Francis, have expressed issues that the convention might result in fragmentation of the broader church.

“The German clerics are undoubtedly extra liberal than Catholic clergymen from Africa or Japanese Europe,” stated Pollack, including that they pose “a problem to the Vatican.”

Earlier this month, Pope Francis launched a two-year worldwide consultation on the longer term course of the church — a transfer welcomed by reformists and criticized by conservatives who worry it is going to undermine the church’s construction.

For now, Maria 2.0’s calls for for equal rights are being mentioned as a part of the Synodal Path challenge, Matthias Kopp, a German Bishops’ Convention spokesman, informed CNN.

Requested whether or not sufficient had been carried out to fight sexual abuse throughout the church, Kopp added: “We’re engaged on it. We did a lot and we’ve to proceed on this.”

Again in Fulda, the demonstrators fold up their banners and pack away their pink cardboard crosses, prepared for the following rally. Their battle is much from over.