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TheGerman Bishops' Conference (German:Deutsche Bischofskonferenz) is theepiscopal conference of thebishops of theCatholicdioceses inGermany. Members includediocesan bishops,coadjutors,auxiliary bishops, anddiocesan administrators.
The first meeting of the German bishops took place inWürzburg in 1848, and in 1867 theFulda Conference of Bishops ("next to the grave ofSt. Boniface") was established, which reorganized as German Bishops' Conference in 1966. The annual autumn conference of the German bishops still takes place in Fulda, while the meeting in spring is held at alternating places.
After the construction of theBerlin Wall theordinaries in the EastGerman Democratic Republic (GDR) were unable to participate in theFulda Conference of Bishops. In 1974 the GDR formally suggested talks with theHoly See. As one of the outcomes, theBerlin Conference of Bishops was established for the East German ordinaries on 26 July 1976. The Diocese of Berlin, also comprisingWest Berlin, was thereafter represented in the German Bishops' Conference and the Berlin Conference alike, in the former by itsvicar general, in the latter by the bishop personally. The Catholic Church did not consider the Berlin Conference as a national Bishops' Conference, since the Holy See officially conceived the East German ordinaries as part of the German Bishops' Conference as papally confirmed by its statute on 26 September 1976. East Germany's diocesan structure was complicated. Since 1972 three sees had their seat in East Germany, the dioceses of Berlin and of Dresden-Meissen and theApostolic Administration of Görlitz. The rest of East Germany belonged to dioceses seated inWest Germany, which appointed commissaries for the East German parts of their dioceses. The Berlin Conference was disestablished in 1990.
On 25 September 2018,[1] the national Episcopal Conference threw the presentation of a self-commissioned study from which resulted at least 3.700 cases of sexual abuse in Germany from 1946 to 2014.[2] More than a half were child abuse cases.[3]
In 2010, the New York Times published the allegations of sexual abuses committed by a priest of the Munich diocese in the 80s. It was preceded by the ones ofLawrence Murphy in Wisconsin, happened in a school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974.[4]
The conference's maxim that, where other creatures are concerned, "we can speak of the priority of [their]being over [their]being useful" was commended byPope Francis in his 2015encyclical letterLaudato si'.[5]
Episcopal conferences in Europe | ||
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 | ||
| Province of Bamberg | |
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| Province of Berlin | |
| Province of Cologne | |
| Province of Freiburg | |
| Province of Hamburg | |
| Province of Munich and Freising | |
| Province of Paderborn | |
| Sui iuris jurisdictions | |
| Archdioceses | | |
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| Dioceses | ||
| Other | ||
