The President of Ger-many has called for the Catholic Church to allow Protestants to receive Communion. Speaking at Katholikentag, a major conference for German-speaking Catholics in Münster, Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: “Let us seek ways of expressing the common Christian faith by sharing in the Last Supper and Communion. I am sure: Thousands of Christians in interdenomi-national marriages are hoping for this.”

Steinmeier said he was speaking “not as Federal President, but as an a vowed Evangelical Christian who lives in an interdenominational marriage.”

He also criticised the Bavarian government’s decision to hang crosses in public buildings, saying the state should not “patronise” religion.

His words came after the Vatican failed to rule on whether a proposal by German bishops to allow Protestants married to Catholics to receive Communion under certain circumstances violated Church teaching. Seven German bishops, including Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne, had challenged the proposal and asked the Vatican to intervene, but Pope Francis urged the bishops to come to an agreement amongst themselves.

“I don’t see the point of a public debate about wafers,” he said, referring to the Blessed Sacrament. He added that climate change is a “far more serious” issue. The crowd, which was mainly Catholic, applauded him as he said that, since he paid his Church tax, the Church had “better happily hand out a wafer for it, or give me back my money!”