A Vatican cardinal cancelled a weekend visit to Germany after reportedly receiving threats re-lated to his recent remarks about the country’s “synodal way.”
Cardinal Kurt Koch was due to celebrate Mass and give a lecture on Oct. 2 in the southern German city of Schwäbisch Gmünd. He was also expected to celebrate Mass in the nearby town of Ellwangen on Oct. 3.
But local media reported that the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity pulled out of the trip for “security reasons.”
The 72-year-old cardinal pro-voked anger in Germany when he invoked the Nazi era while criticizing the synodal way, a controversial initiative bringing together bishops and lay people to discuss hot-button issues.
Bishop Georg Bätzing, chair-man of the German bishops’ con-ference, called on Koch to apolo-gize publicly after the cardinal referred to the virulently anti-Semitic “German Christian” movement in a Sept. 29 interview with the newspaper Die Tage-spost.
He said that if the cardinal did not withdraw his remarks, he would make an “official com-plaint” to Pope Francis.
In the interview, Koch argued that the synodal way was seeking to establish “new sources” for Catholic teaching, “in addition to the sources of revelation of Scripture and Tradition.”
He added that it frightened him “that this is happening again in Germany.”