Who Will Be At the Vatican Meeting on German Intercommunion?

Today the Bollettino has an announcement on the meeting taking place this Thursday, May 3, at the Vatican on “the theme of eventual access to the Eucharist for non-Catholic spouses in mixed marriages.” (That’s a mistranslation, by the way. The Italian eventuale, as the German eventuell, mean “possible” and not “eventual.”) This is a meeting of Germans with Vatican curia officials.

In the German delegation are:

• Cardinal Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich und Freising and president of the German Episcopal Conference;
• Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, archbishop of Cologne;
• Felix Genn, bishop of Munster;
• Karl-Heinz Wiesemann, bishop of Speyer and president of the Doctrinal Commission of the German Episcopal Conference;
• Rudolf Voderholzer, bishop of Regensburg, vice president of the Doctrinal Commission of the German Episcopal Conference;
• Gerhard Feige, bishop of Magdeburg and president of the Commission for Ecumenism of the German Episcopal Conference;
• Fr. Hans Langendörfer, S.J., secretary general of the German Episcopal Conference.

Participating members of the Roman curia are:

• Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith;
• Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity;
• Msgr. Markus Graulich, S.D.B., under-secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts;
• Fr. Hermann Geissler, F.S.O., office head of the Doctrinal Section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The composition of the German delegation is ecumenically and doctrinally strong. Just two of the seven bishops who appealed to the Vatican against the majority decision of the German bishops are present: Cardinal Woelki and Bishop Voderholzer.

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