“Advance religious freedom”

adminonDecember 17, 2021January 27, 2022Leave a Comment

View of the Sea of Galilee © Elisabeth Schomaker (KNA)

Israel to make it easier for Christians from Gaza to attend Christmas celebrations in Jordan. In recent years, Palestinian Christians were also allowed to visit their relatives in the Gaza Strip. It was not known whether this would be possible again.

600 Christians from the West Bank are also said to have been registered in the period between 30. December and the 20. The winner of the award will be allowed to leave the country via Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv on January 1, the Israeli Coordination Office for Government Activities in the Occupied Territories (COGAT) announced on Monday in response to a request from the Catholic News Agency (KNA). The authority did not disclose the number of exit permits ied to Gaza Christians.

Security checks needed

The measures are part of efforts to "advance and implement freedom of religion and worship and allow the population to participate in the usual celebrations of the season," COGAT said. All permits, however, would be subject to security screening.

Among the decided measures also 400 entry permits for Christians from Arab countries, who want to visit their families in the West Bank, count accordingly. The number of permits for church employees is to be increased. Palestinian Christian clergy should also be allowed to cross the Bezeq checkpoint in the Jordan Valley to visit Christian sites in the Galilee.

No details were given by the authority on whether Palestinian Christians will be allowed to visit relatives in Gaza, as in previous years, and whether Christians from Gaza will be allowed to travel to East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

No exit permits requested yet

Most recently, Israel had tightened exit conditions for Gaza Christians on Christian holidays after several Christians failed to return to the Gaza Strip after permits expired. After harsh criticism from church leaders, 300 Gaza Christians were briefly allowed to enter the West Bank and Jerusalem at Easter.

To date, the community has not been able to apply for exit permits for its faithful, the Catholic priest of Gaza, Gabriel Romanelli, told KNA on Monday. Accordingly, the submission of the corresponding applications requires the approval of Israel, which has not yet been received, the cleric said.

According to Romanelli, 117 Catholic Christians currently live in Gaza. The total number of Christians, including the majority Greek Orthodox, has fallen below 800 believers, according to estimates by the Latin Patriarchate.

Because the St. St. Hedwig's Cathedral is being renovated, it will soon be closed for a longer period of time. Berlin's Archbishop Koch celebrates the last pontifical mass there on Amption Day for the time being – with relief and regret, as he says in an interview.

our siteHow will the last pontifical mass in the St. Looking at St. Hedwig's Cathedral? Will that be special today?

Heiner Koch (Archbishop of Berlin): First of all, it is special because it is the Solemnity of the Amption of Mary into Heaven – for us a very important feast that indicates that we have a future ahead of us, that God is waiting for us, that we have a home to which we are on our way. This is a great message – especially in a city that is often out of touch with this dimension.

At the end of the service, I will take up an old custom and bless roses as a sign of the Mother of God, as a sign of the fragrance from her grave, and give people a sign of hope and confidence to take with them on their way.

Of course, this is also a special service, because it is the last pontifical mass, not the last mass, in this cathedral. For me this is also a bit of melancholy. But it is also time to start with the necessary renovation work that is now pending – dome and floor texture. The cathedral is in urgent need.

Interviewer: How do you go on with the "packing of suitcases" and the move?

Koch: We will go to St. It is in Wedding, it is not so far away, but it is very significant that we are going to this part of the city. I will also be worshipping in many other places during this time. Being a bit of a traveling bishop in the diocese, so also in Brandenburg and Western Pomerania. It's a lot of small details, there's a bit of adventure involved.
our site: What does the move mean for yourself? Longer distances, new surroundings?

Cook: Of course! The people in Potsdam are also very happy that I will also hold pontifical offices there on high feasts sometimes. We are a very large diocese in terms of area and it is important that people outside Berlin know that he is also our bishop.

Interviewer: What will happen in St. Joseph still be different?
Koch: Certainly, the many people who attend our services, tourists, passers-by, even from the political sphere, will not want us to move to St. Joseph follow. So the passerby Christians who go to a church because they are in Berlin for a short time or are just happy to find a local church on their way, they will be missing. But let's wait and see, maybe there is a very unique imprint there from the working class and from the district of Wedding, which is characterized by interfaith ies.
Interviewer: It's not like everyone is happy about the rebuild. In the afternoon, the "Friends of St. Joseph. Hedwig's cathedral" protests. They fear a "radical conversion and the destruction of a historical monument," want to use all legal means to prevent a conversion .What do you say to the concerns?
Koch: I take her very seriously. I know this is a serious point for many because their heart is struck because they feel a piece of GDR church history is affected here. But you will see how much is preserved in this church and I really try to involve these people – with what is still to be shaped. I know that some will not go along the way. It is sad, but a decision was made in a good communicative process.
Interviewer: And with what feeling do you go to the last pontifical office today?? Does it matter to an archbishop, a professional, if he changes his home church??
Cook: No, somehow it hurts me. It's a church that is located in such a central location and has so many pastoral opportunities. I would prefer to continue to celebrate services tomorrow – in a renovated church. Only this church – regardless of its reconstruction – is in urgent need of renewal. It is dilapidated in some things, it is dirty, it needs to be secured. We also need to address new challenges, for example, how to get people in who don't necessarily fall in with churches. The question of light, heating, air in this church, the loudspeaker system, technical possibilities. There are so many things, nothing has been done to the church for 40 years. I'm relieved that it's starting, but also regret that I have to leave the church.

The interview was conducted by Hilde Regeniter.

Tafel employees distribute food © Patrick Seeger

Refugees and pensioners have also been coming for a long time: the mostly volunteer helpers at the Tafel distribution points in Germany have a lot to do. 25 years after the founding of the umbrella organization of the Tafel, they seem more important than ever.

It is an idea that impresses above all by its simplicity: companies produce surpluses, while the socially needy often lack the most basic necessities at the end of the month. So why not simply distribute surplus food to those in need? In the early 1990s, a women’s initiative in Berlin began to implement this idea and founded an initiative for it in the city in 1993: That was the birth of the first food bank. Similar initiatives in the USA served as a model.

More than 900 have been added over the years. 60.000 volunteers are involved and help around 1.5 million people to make ends meet every month. The Tafeln are supported by charities and citizens’ associations. And for 25 years now, there has been the umbrella organization of the Tafeln, which, with its employees, primarily takes care of logistics.

Praise and criticism

Despite all the praise, for some years now there has also been criticism of the so-called Tafel movement. The main accusation is that the food banks have moved away from their original approach as an emergency solution and are now serving as a kind of alibi for politicians.

One of the biggest critics is the social scientist Stefan Selke. For him, it’s not a question of yes or no, the scientist emphasizes again and again. The Tafeln, which take care of needy people, in principle did valuable work. What is really needed, however, are political solutions such as a poverty-preventing minimum income, Selke said. His initiative "Critical Action Alliance 20 Years of Tables" was also joined by individual Caritas and Diakonie associations.

The Tafeln counter: Of course, the movement must be careful not to be taken over – not by politics, not by food chains, they argue. And of course they would have made mistakes and learned over the years. At the same time, the federal association stresses that the Tafeln have never claimed to provide a full supply; that is clearly the task of the state.

Instead, the Tafeln want to make it possible for people to perhaps also be able to afford a cultural event sometimes.

Greatly changed customer structure

In addition, the structure of customers has changed considerably in recent years, according to Jochen Bruhl, chairman of the Federal Association of Food Banks in Germany. In the beginning, the Tafeln mainly supported homeless people, then came ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union. Even before the summer of 2015, refugees had increasingly sought help. The boards are therefore a "seismograph" of society.

The fact that individual food bank associations sometimes resort to rigorous measures became very clear two years ago. At the time, the Essen Tafel declared that it would only accept new needy people with German passports into its file. The reason, he said, was that the proportion of migrants had recently risen to three quarters of the population. Bruhl distanced itself from the measure. During the Corona lockdown and even afterward, many food banks showed flexibility, bagging food and taking it directly to those in need.

For Sabine Werth, who was part of the women’s initiative 27 years ago, the Tafel movement is something like a life’s work. And over the years, she has learned to deal with criticism more calmly. Many people who visited the Tafel came because the facility had also become an important contact point for another reason. According to the 63-year-old Tafel founder, valuable encounters and friendships were formed there.

Werth was also the one who launched another Tafel initiative about 15 years ago: to distribute the collected food more quickly, she approached Berlin church congregations. In the meantime, there are more than 40 distribution points, which help around 50,000 people.000 needy Berliners take advantage of. This model has set a precedent. In other large cities such as Hamburg and Cologne, the food banks now also use church congregations or other social institutions as distribution points.

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