A “part of the solution”

adminonDecember 16, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

Philip Wilson, Australian Archbishop © Darren Pateman

Former president of the Australian bishops' conference Philip Wilson is dead. Outreach to abuse victims is 'part of his legacy,' says Archbishop Patrick O'Regan. Wilson had himself been convicted of cover-up and acquitted again.

Former Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson has died at age 70. Although Archbishop Wilson was seriously ill, his death on Sunday came as a surprise, the archdiocese announced. The president of the Australian Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Mark Coleridge, called Wilson a "true man of the church and good friend who suffered much" on Twitter. Wilson led the Archdiocese of Adelaide from 2001 to 2016 and the bishops' conference from 2006 to 2010.

Archbishop Patrick O'Regan, Wilson's successor in Adelaide, said Wilson had made important contributions to the church and had been popular throughout the country. But O'Regan also recalled allegations of cover-ups of sexual abuse cases, as well as Wilson's role as former president of the bishops' conference in reforms of the church's handling of abuse cases.

Accusations, conviction, acquittal

"A horrific time of allegations, accusations, convictions and eventual acquittal was an important chapter in Philip's life, but how his support and advocacy for victims and those affected are also part of his legacy," Archbishop O'Regan said "Philip knew the hardship that many people have endured and suffered at the hands of the sickening acts of some in the Church. He was part of the solution and was widely recognized for it."

Wilson had initially been sentenced in July 2018 to 12 months in prison for covering up abuse cases, which was shortly thereafter commuted to house arrest. Under prere from the Australian government and public, Wilson resigned as Archbishop of Adelaide following his conviction. In December 2018, the conviction on appeal was overturned for lack of evidence.

Wilson was ordained a priest in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese in 1975; allegations of abuse cover-up related to that time. After his episcopal ordination as bishop of Wollongong in 1996, Wilson became a central figure in the Australian church's reform of its handling of abuse cases. His tenure as president of the bishops' conference included World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008, with a visit by Pope Benedict XVI.

Volunteers organize the community work themselves © Caroline Seidel

The Catholic parish "Zur Heiligen Familie" organizes itself without the support of full-time staff such as a priest or a parish worker. This makes it a model parish in the Essen diocese.

Interviewer: You are 27 years old and have been actively involved for a long time in the Catholic parish "Zur Heiligen Familie" in Essen on Margarethenhohe. What do you do, what are you responsible for??

Thomas Wichelhaus (active member of the parish "Zur Heiligen Familie" in Essen): I have been an altar boy for many years and was head altar boy for a long time. I recently relinquished that post. Apart from that, I am a member of the board of the support association and very active in the parish, so I try to help where I can.

Interviewer: A parish that organizes itself. What exactly does it mean?

Wichelhaus: This means that we no longer have a priest or a full-time staff member, no sexton, no janitor, in fact virtually nothing at all. In principle, we have to do everything that comes up ourselves and try to keep it going somehow.

Interviewer: But that was not always the case, was it??

Wichelhaus: No, of course not. We were a separate parish many years ago and then at some point we had only one parish assistant. Unfortunately, that died a few years ago. So we were alone and had to see how to proceed.

Interviewer: How have you managed in the meantime? How do you approach these tasks?

Wichelhaus: We have always been a very active parish and were raised to be very active by our main ministers at the time. At that time we slipped into it, I say. We were faced with this task at some point and had no other option but to do it. That is why we have tackled it. After a few years we got the proposal from the diocese to become a really self-governing parish.

Then we worked that out over a longer process. Now we are working in this model and everyone is going along with it. Not everyone in the same way, of course – not everyone has the same amount of time. But it is very impressive to see how the whole thing has brought us a bit closer once again. Of course, we had a lot of active people in the past: honor guard, church choir, altar servers. Now this has led to the groups all moving closer together and really talking to each other.

Interviewer: Baptism, wedding, funeral – what do you do when a priest is needed??

Wichelhaus: Of course, we have a service on Sunday, for which a priest from our parish, of which we are a part, comes and visits us. We have a priest who supports us in the preparation of communion children. Of course, priests from other parishes visit us when there is a wedding, a baptism, or a funeral.

Interviewer: The parish has now become a model project in the diocese. Why is that so? And for whom could you also be a role model??

Wichelhaus: I don't know exactly the motives of the diocese. Because of the way our Catholic Church is developing, it will soon be the case in many other parishes that lay people will have to do a lot more themselves because there is simply a lack of full-time staff. Perhaps our experiences can help other parishes to set up something similar themselves at some point.

Interviewer: Are there parishes that have come forward and asked, say, how do you actually do this – we may be planning this as well?

Wichelhaus: As far as I know, no. I think you can't really plan it either, but as long as you have a priest or a parish priest with you in the parish, you're also very happy. There is still no one who has signed up now.

I think everyone has to find their own way first. That's a very individual thing: How a parish is set up, what the environment is like, and what tasks need to be done in the parish.

The interview was conducted by Carsten Dopp.

A lay Catholic initiative has protested in Munich against the reform dialogue of the Catholic Church in Germany. Also present was the former papal ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Vigano. He had called on Pope Francis to resign in 2018.

The outcome of the Synodal Way could be "nothing other than the establishment of a church separate from Rome," according to a statement released over the weekend by the Acies Ordinata initiative. According to a reporter for the U.S. magazine National Catholic Register, believers of different nationalities gathered for silent prayer in front of the Theatinerkirche in the center of Munich. According to the report, among the participants was Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who had called on Pope Francis to resign.

Calls for clear positioning

Historian Roberto de Mattei told the portal "Corrispondenza Romana," a platform for conservative critics of the pope, that Munich was chosen because Cardinal Reinhard Marx had his official residence there. The statement calls on Pope Francis to be clear: "He does not disapprove of the positions of the German bishops, nor of their goal of extending the 'binding' decisions of their 'synodal way' to the whole Church. 'If he shares their doctrinal deviations, he should have the courage to say so openly,' it says.

The German bishops are urged to "be honest enough to bring the 'synodal path' to its logical conclusion, namely the foundation of a new church with a German-Amazonian face, separate from the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church". Finally, German Catholics should stop paying church tax, which is the "necessary financial basis for carrying out the 'synodal way'".

Austrian activist Tschuggel among Protestants

Also present at the Munich protest, according to the National Catholic Register, was Austrian activist Alexander Tschugguel. He had stolen several wooden figures by an indigenous artist from a church and thrown them into the Tiber River during the 2019 Amazon Synod in Rome in protest of alleged idolatry. The former papal ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, made his first public appearance in Munich in about a year and a half. In August 2018, Vigano accused Pope Francis of a lax approach to moral transgressions and homosexuality among the clergy.

With the two-year Synodal Way, the bishops in Germany and the Central Committee of Catholics want to regain lost trust after the abuse scandal. The first plenary meeting will be held in Frankfurt at the end of January.

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