The Pope on his stone pedestal is the only one who remains completely unmoved during all the debates. Even the sleet, which a strong but strangely indecisive wind blows repeatedly across the Traunstein town square on this cold winter afternoon, simply rolls off it for the time being. Maybe two dozen people are standing around and talking mainly about him and his role in the abuse scandal that hasn’t shaken the Catholic Church enough for so long and is now shaking this memorial.
In 2007, the town of Traunstein placed it on the town square for itself and its honorary citizen Joseph Ratzinger, then Pope Benedict XVI. It is this bronze bust that just keeps looking straight ahead into the flurry in the midst of all the people who, despite his 94 years, now expect more from the real Benedict than an opinion for the opinion of a law firm and a correction with which he, the Pope Emeritus, admitting untruth on a key issue.
Horst Trüdinger asks the question that bothers him so much on a large poster that he has placed diagonally behind Benedict’s bust in front of the church portal of Sankt Oswald: So whether Cardinal Ratzinger was Archbishop of the Diocese of Munich and Freising from 1977 to made complicit in 1982 by “covering up, concealing, denying, looking the other way” and what consequences that would have to have?
Horst Trüdinger took a position with his questions behind the bust of the Pope.
(Photo: Matthias Köpf)
At 75, Trüdinger does not count himself among the Green Youth in Traunstein, which had announced a protest action at the Pope’s bust for this afternoon. And he didn’t come as an opponent of the church either, but to stand up for what he sees as his church.
For many years he has been involved for and in this church, as a parish councilor in Seebruck, for the Tafel, for social counseling or in the asylum helper group. With his red poster with the Caritas logo, he usually opposes Pegida or AfD marches when it is necessary again. For this day he pasted over the Caritas poster with yellow paper and his question about the consequences of the abuse affair.
Nicoletta Göttlicher is active in the church as a lecturer and solo singer.
(Photo: Matthias Köpf)
But the Catholic Church sees itself as universal, and so there is room for Nicoletta Göttlicher or Rothraud Knirsch, for example, alongside Horst Trüdinger. Göttlicher is a lecturer and solo singer in the parish and is applying for a seat on the parish council, probably also now and here at the Pope bust.
Above all, however, Göttlicher has come to the town square to defend her church and her pope against accusations she considers unjust. That’s exactly how Rothraud Knirsch sees it. She talks about the two years that she studied theology at the Lateran University in Rome after she retired, talks about the modest person and great theologian Joseph Ratzinger and about his achievements in understanding the church and community.
Rothraud Knirsch sees in Benedict above all a modest man and great theologian.
(Photo: Matthias Köpf)
So where Rothraud Knirsch speaks of theology and Ecclesia, Horst Trüdinger speaks of the needy and charity, and here Konrad Roider is responsible for both. Roider was born in 1982, when Joseph Ratzinger had just moved from Munich to the Vatican as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and he is actually pastor of Taching, Tengling, Tettenhausen and Törring. But because the position in Traunstein has been vacant since the summer, Roider also has to temporarily manage the Traunstein town church with its five parishes.
In addition to his parish association in the surrounding area, Pastor Konrad Roider also has to administer the Traunstein town church with five parishes.
(Photo: Matthias Köpf)
So Roider also came here this afternoon. When he speaks of his church, it sounds more like local church work than a chain of command that stretches from Rome via Munich and Freising to Taching and Traunstein. Roider also speaks of the horror of hundreds of cases of abuse and the failure of the church as an organization. He cannot and does not want to ask for understanding, but he does ask for a personal explanation from Benedict about all this.
Roider phoned Martin Zillner from the Green Youth, who registered the protest at the monument, early in the morning. A good conversation, they both say, and now they continue it in the sleet on the town square, in the midst of maybe two dozen people who are discussing in small groups.
Zillner is 27 and left the church three years ago. He brought the concrete base of an old field cross with him on a pallet truck and together they attached sheets of paper laminated to it chronicling the abuse scandal and citing quotes from the Pope Emeritus. In any case, he is no longer a role model for young people, says Zillner.
The city cannot simply continue as a “papal city” as before, but must take a critical look at its honorary citizen, who also wears its ring of honor and is the namesake of the “Pope Benedict XVI Square” in front of the local district office.
Martin Zillner from the Green Youth in Traunstein organized the protest.
(Photo: Matthias Köpf)
Mayor Christian Hümmer (CSU) had Zillner lined up on Friday not to damage the bust, hence the field cross base. Otherwise, the city that Benedict often and gladly referred to as his “home” and his “native city” gained time on Friday. Together with the district of Traunstein, the city of Tittmoning and the municipality of Surberg, she wants to convene a commission to deal with the role of their joint honorary citizen and to draw up a recommendation for the respective councils.
It has not yet been decided how the commission will be made up and by when it will come to its proposals, says Tittmoning’s mayor Andreas Bratzdrum (CSU), in whose city Joseph Ratzinger once visited what is now the Benedict kindergarten.
The last prominent tribute from the region dates back to October, when the new Pope Benedict organ was inaugurated here in Sankt Oswald, where Ratzinger celebrated his first Mass as a priest. The name may have helped with the financing, the donors and sponsors were numerous, even money came from the Vatican.
Vespers at the inauguration were conducted by Georg Gänswein, who has been Ratzinger’s right hand to this day. Many here blame the aged Benedict less than Gänswein for the fact that the statement for the report had to be corrected.
The word “lie” from the eighth commandment is not even used by Martin Zillner, who also emphasizes that the protest is not directed against the community or against Catholics personally. There were almost exactly 12,000 of them in Traunstein on Monday, with a good 22,000 inhabitants.
According to the city administration, 32 people in Traunstein have formally turned their backs on the Catholic Church in the past ten days alone. In January there were 42 resignations, around three times as many as in January 2020 and 2021. Soon only every second Traunsteiner will be Catholic. Most of them just pass by this afternoon.