Thomas Prieto Peral has traveled widely around the world. Not as a vacationer, but as a traveler on behalf of the church, he visited people in crisis regions, in northern Iraq, in Sarajevo, and in many other places. Friends of the pastor live in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It was clear to him, he recently said in an interview with the SZ, that these days even an expression of empathy without unconditionally committing to a narrative is “so political and controversial that it immediately opens up huge debates.”
But staying out of it is out of the question for the 57-year-old pastor. Thomas Prieto Peral is a thoroughly political person, and this is also what the sermon he gave on Sunday during his ceremonial induction into the office of Protestant regional bishop of Munich and Upper Bavaria was like.
To Haydn’s sonorous “Choral St. Antonini”, not only high-ranking religious representatives from Munich and Upper Bavaria will be marching into the magnificent St. Luke’s Church for the festive service with Prieto Peral on Sunday at ten o’clock, but also guests from far away: the head of the Christian Aid Program North Iraq also arrived, as did the director of the “Wings of Hope” trauma center in Bethlehem, an evangelical foundation that supports traumatized people in crisis regions of the world and which Pietro Peral once co-founded. As a former speaker for ecumenism and global responsibility in the Protestant regional church office, he also set up a large aid organization for Christians in the Middle East.
The new regional bishop said in his inaugural sermon that he was always impressed by the hope that the people in these regions radiated, by the bridge builders and peacemakers among them: “They don’t always just follow violence, which always only has violence as an answer – They have the courage to see the individual people on the other side, to speak to them and to start future projects with them.” Having trust and freeing yourself to act is what he also wants to call for.
In Munich, where coexistence between the Jewish and Muslim communities has been significantly disrupted following the Hamas terror on October 7th, some people will have received this message with interest. Guests at the service and the subsequent reception in the Old Town Hall also include the President of the Israelite Community, Charlotte Knobloch, and the Penzberg Imam Benjamin Idriz. Prieto Peral says he also wants to support “peacemakers among Christians, Jews and Muslims” in Munich and Upper Bavaria. “So on the second anniversary of the war in Ukraine and in the face of the terrible terror in Israel and the many war victims in Palestine, I am not giving up hope for peace.”
Regional Bishop Christian Kopp blesses the new regional bishop Thomas Prieto Peral at the celebratory service in Munich’s St. Luke’s Church.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
Prieto Peral, who took office on November 1st, succeeds Christian Kopp, who in turn became the Protestant regional bishop. For Prieto Peral’s future core business, he is focusing on a healing story from the New Testament at the celebratory service: “But just say one word and my servant will be healed.” These are the words that the Roman centurion of Caparnaum, who was neither Christian nor Jewish, addressed to Jesus so that he would help his paralyzed servant. In doing so, he violated the strict ban on contact for Romans with the local Jews, and thus with Rabbi Jesus. “He writes to us in the register,” says Prieto Peral, “what it’s like to stand unconditionally at the side of someone affected.”
The victims of sexual abuse in the Evangelical Church now also needed this unconditional support. The regional bishop is referring to the abuse study for the Protestant Church and the Diaconia published at the end of January, in which scientists – due to a lack of cooperation from the 20 regional churches – were initially only able to bring to light “the tip of the tip of the iceberg”: 1,259 accused were identified sexual violence and 2,225 cases since 1946. “Things have to be on the table,” said Kopp, who inaugurated Prieto Peral into office at the service. The new regional bishop, who is also a trained trauma educator, has a broad perspective and knows how to approach conflicts.
If you like, Prieto Peral is already accompanying a conflict-prone process in the 150 congregations with almost 432,000 members for which he is now responsible as regional bishop: the largest structural change to date in the Protestant regional church, which became necessary as a result of dwindling members and a massive drop in church tax money . As the regional church’s theological planning officer, he has played a leading role in driving the process forward over the past seven years. He has to implement it in the new role.
Prieto Peral, who grew up in Grafrath, where he also lives again, is married to the Catholic university professor and native Spaniard Maria Begoña Prieto Peral. She stands at the altar with her three adult children as her husband is blessed on Sunday surrounded by ecumenical companions in St. Luke. The new political regional bishop states at the end of his inaugural sermon that basic trust, such as that which exists in the family, is also needed again by society. Basic trust also in people with responsibility and in institutions. “Anyone who stirs up political distrust, whoever plays one group off against another, whoever stirs up disgusting anti-Semitism and racism, is paralyzing this country and destroying people.”