Gisela Forster has been fighting for the rights of women in the Catholic Church for decades. To Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. she had a particularly strained relationship. After his death, she finds new courage. From a woman for whom giving up is not an issue.
Interviewed by
Sabine Bader, Berg
Gisela Forster is always at the forefront when it comes to women’s rights in the Catholic Church. For decades, the 76-year-old from Berg has vehemently advocated women’s priesthood. A demand that she lives by herself, after all, she had herself ordained a priestess together with six other women on a Danube ship in 2002. Not unpunished: The then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and later Pope Benedict XVI. excommunicated the women. Forster was not deterred. In 2003 she was ordained bishop. She studied architecture, religious philosophy and art, and worked as an art teacher at the Schäftlarn high school. There she had to keep her love affair with the former Benedictine monk Anselm Forster a secret for 17 years. She has two children together with him. In 1989, the two made their connection public. Since then she has been fighting for the rights of women and pastor’s children, is involved in “Aktion Maria 2.0”, drives to demonstrations, and is committed to the “Synodal Path”. Now, after the death of Benedict XVI, she hopes for a new impetus for equality within the Church.