Willibald Glas never wanted to be bent. In South Africa, where the Catholic priest was a missionary in the 1950s and 1960s, he caused a scandal by welcoming white and black believers to his church; that was unheard of in the apartheid state of the time. He refused the Archbishop of Pretoria the greeting “Your Grace most obedient and devoted servant”; he openly wrote to him that he was not his servant but a priest. And even after his return to the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, when he was finally pastor in Arget near Sauerlach, Glas irritated. He has been suspended from duty twice.
Once he wrote an autobiography in which he expressed his doubts about the teachings of the Church. Archbishop Friedrich Wetter then put him into compulsory retirement. Glas had previously stated publicly that he was boycotting the Peterspfennig for the Pope, because the Pope refused the sacraments to remarried divorced people and enforced celibacy. That had earned him a temporary suspension.
Glas fought for a humane Catholic Church, he brought demands into it that many critical Catholics share. But when he fought celibacy, he also did it for himself and his partner. From 1968 Glas lived with Inge Starzner, his former vicar’s wife. The two never made a secret of their love, Glas wanted to marry her to secure it. But he was not allowed to, otherwise he would have lost the priesthood and most of his pension. He was committed to celibacy. A celibacy that exists only on paper among all the priests he knows, he once said.
Finally, Glas turned to Pope Francis and asked for an exception. That was in 2014; perhaps a new era would dawn with the new pope, was the hope. At the time, Glas wrote that he was running out of time. The only answer was that one had to go through official channels, says Inge Starzner. Willibald Glas died on Monday at the age of 94. He will be buried in Sauerlach this Saturday. He leaves behind a partner to whom he was never allowed to pledge loyalty in front of a registrar or even an altar. Nevertheless, he has been with her through good times and bad, for more than half a century.