The investigations into Nuremberg Jesuit Father Jörg Alt, who is said to have rescued food from supermarket dumpsters, have been dropped for the second time. The crimes admitted by the priest himself were rated as minor, since the value of the food that had already been disposed of was marginal, the public prosecutor’s office in Nuremberg-Fürth announced on Monday. The supermarkets, as the legal owners, would have waived criminal charges.
The case against the priest had already been stopped once in May. At that time, the investigating authorities could not clarify which specific goods had been stolen from the garbage cans. In the meantime, Alt had admitted to further criminal offenses, so that it had to be determined again.
The Father has been campaigning for the fight against poverty and the fairer distribution of wealth for some time. The so-called containers – i.e. the collection of food that has already been thrown away – is part of his campaign. According to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, around twelve million tons of food end up in the garbage in Germany every year.