Amid calls
for his resignation over a costly renovation, the Catholic Bishop of Limburg
now faces penalties for lying under oath. In a row with the news magazine Der
Spiegel, he has denied a first-class trip to India.
A Hamburg prosecutor has requested a penalty order against Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, the Catholic Bishop of Limburg, for having submitted two false affidavits to the Regional Court of Hamburg in September 2012.
A Hamburg prosecutor has requested a penalty order against Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, the Catholic Bishop of Limburg, for having submitted two false affidavits to the Regional Court of Hamburg in September 2012.
The bishop
made headlines for taking an alleged first-class flight to India, and has been
in a legal dispute with leading news magazine Der Spiegel on the issue.
Tebartz-van Elst issued a statement under oath denying that he was asked by the
Spiegel journalist about the first-class trip, and that he had claimed to have
flown business class, forcing Spiegel to print a retraction.
The
publication has since said it stands by the story and filed a complaint with
public prosecutors in its home city, Hamburg. Both the question and answer were
recorded on a mobile-phone video that were published by Spiegel.
Building
controversy
The
bishop’s name has been plastered across German newspapers all week after his
diocese announced revised costs of 31 million euros ($42 million) for his new
residence and offices, next door to the celebrated Limburg Cathedral. The
predicted figure stood at 5.5 million when construction began in 2010.
The Bishop
of Limburg however broke his silence on the topic on Thursday in an interview
with Germany's mass-circulation Bild newspaper.
"People
are taken aback by the number, I understand that," Bishop Tebartz-van Elst
told Bild. "But there are ten separate building projects involved. You
need to consider lots of details, for instance the regulations governing the
preservation of monuments."
Tebartz-van
Elst also alluded to a special three-person panel he set up, saying this group
had also been monitoring the costs since 2011. Prior to the bishop's interview
in Bild, the members of the panel had said they were shocked at the revised
figures, accusing Bishop Tebartz-van Elst of keeping them in the dark. Jochen
Riebel, a former state cabinet minister in Hesse, was the most outspoken of the
trio.
"The
only way I can make sense of this for myself is that either the bishop is a
very accomplished liar, or that he's somehow in poor health," Riebel told
the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Wednesday.
What would
Pope Francis think?
Other
critics, including the German reform group "Wir sind Kirche"
("We are Church"), have said the rising costs and limited
communication on the matter from Limburg's 53-year-old bishop stood in sharp
contrast to Pope Francis' calls for Roman Catholicism to become less lavish and more open. One went so far as to call for a response from the Vatican.
Echoes of a letter nailed to the door? |
Another
objector, German light artist Oliver Bienkowski, on Tuesday projected a
caricature of the bishop onto the facade of the cathedral with the German for
"Thou shalt not steal" underneath.
Open letter
promised
The latest
figure of 31 million euros for the building project in Limburg shocked Germans
all the more considering a September statement from the diocese's spokesman.
Stefan Schnelle said at the time that the "figure of 20 million euros in
some media reports has been plucked from thin air," suggesting instead
that just over 10 million might be closer to the mark.
Bishop
Tebartz-van Elst also criticized the tone of news reports on the subject in
Thursday's interview with Bild, saying many people knew to take the reports
with a pinch of salt.
"This
weekend I want to directly address the believers in our diocese in an open
letter and explain some things," Tebartz-van Elst said.
msh, hc/tj (AFP, dpa, epd, KNA)
Related Articles:
Locals in Limburg lose faith in 'luxury bishop'
Embattled German 'luxury bishop' in legal trouble
Locals in Limburg lose faith in 'luxury bishop'
Embattled German 'luxury bishop' in legal trouble
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.