Pope's monument shrouded

adminonJanuary 21, 2022January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

Symbol image abuse © Harald Oppitz (KNA)

The Catholic Church in Poland has completely shrouded a papal memorial that also shows an accused priest in response to a documentary on child sexual abuse by clergy.

Monument in western Polish pilgrimage town of Lichen depicts Pope John Paul II. (1978-2005) depicted receiving a model of the basilica there from a kneeling priest accused of abuse in the film. The fate of the monument will be decided in the near future, the responsible Polish province of the male order of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary (MIC) announced on Twitter on Tuesday.

Enormous interest for abuse documentary

Already on Sunday evening, the order had announced that priest Eugeniusz Makulski (91) had been banned from all pastoral activities because of his offenses. Until 2004, he was a curator of the important Marian sanctuary in front of which the monument stands. The abuse documentary "Just don't tell anyone" published on the Internet on Saturday met with enormous interest in Poland. By Tuesday afternoon, it had been viewed some twelve million times on the video platform "YouTube". In it, victims confront their former tormentors with their deeds.

After the opposition, Vice Gov. Jaroslaw Gowin also criticized the Catholic Church on Tuesday. "I think the church has failed the test in this matter," the science minister said on state radio. She must face the truth. However, the allegations only affected a "very small part" of the clergy, Gowin stressed. He had not met so many outstanding people in any other social group as among clergymen.

Apology to victims

President Andrzej Duda called for "zero tolerance" for child abuse in light of documentary film. "We must fight ruthlessly and everywhere against pedophilia," he wrote on Twitter. Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro on Monday charged a specially formed group of prosecutors with analyzing the abuse depicted in the film. The opposition party Civic Platform (PO) introduced a bill in parliament to abolish the statute of limitations for sex crimes against children. The Catholic Polish Bishops' Conference apologized to all victims in a written statement immediately after the film was released.

The message is clear: the participants of the eleventh congress "Joy of Faith" in Karlsruhe did not want to hide, but a few days before Benedict XVI's visit to Germany. Confessing the flag. A review.

An unusual demonstration forms in front of the Karlsruhe Congress Center. "I love Benedict XVI." posters are held aloft, boy scouts sing pious songs, ex-CDU state president Werner Munch protests loudly against a "de-Christianization of German politics".

"We are looking forward to the pope. He wants to encourage us in the faith. Hopefully his message will fall on fertile ground," said Hubert Gindert, chairman of the "Forum of German Catholics," which sponsored the congress with about 1.000 participants organized at the weekend in Karlsruhe.

Colorful Mischu
Catholics from all over Germany have come, members of the devout "Youth 2000," spiritual movements and other groups of the conservative Catholic wing, many rather older Christians, but also numerous families. Anti-abortion activists distribute small plastic figurines resembling embryos to protest more than 100.000 abortions to protest. Rosaries and holy water bowls are for sale. Two confession rooms and an adoration room have been set up and are used by many.

In lectures and panel discussions, Catholics call for better protection of marriage and the family. A resolution passed by the plenum calls on German President Christian Wulff to still stop the limited release of genetic tests on embryos passed in the Bundestag in July by refusing to sign the law. "If we take human dignity seriously, we are not entitled to make any distinction between not-yet-human, human and not-more-human," the resolution states. Wulff would therefore have to prevent the release of pre-implantation diagnostics (PID).

"State sexualization of children"
Another paper deplores a "state sexualization of children" in schools and kindergartens. A "manipulative and shame-destroying sex education of children by the state" must stop, the appeal said. And the Catholic Forum calls for parents to have the right to opt their children out of sex education classes if necessary.

At the same time, internal church questions take up a lot of space. The ubiquitous buzzword here is the "new evangelization" also called for by the Pope. The "evaporation of faith in Germany and the whole of Europe" is diagnosed, for example, by Congress patron Johanna Grafin von Westphalen. Speakers like Salzburg Auxiliary Bishop Andreas Laun call for working more intensively to pass on the faith.

"Lifting the rich treasures of the Catholic faith anew"
The charismatic Cistercian monk Father Karl Wallner put it this way: "We don't need postmodern religiosity with esoteric elements and wellness religion. Rather, we need to rekindle the rich treasures of the Catholic faith!"He himself reports from his monastery Heiligenkreuz in Austria, where hundreds of young people regularly come to prayer nights. Also in Karlsruhe young Catholics organized with "Nightfever" a long prayer night.

Vincentian Sister Anneliese Mader struck a quieter note in her lecture on Catholic hospice work. When she talks about her empathetic and sacrificial care for the terminally ill and dying, it becomes clear what powers deep trust in God can unleash.

At the beginning of the conference, the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, appealed to all Catholics to get involved in society and help the socially disadvantaged. It is not a "question of calculation" for the church, but an obligatory task "to serve the people in the following of Christ", says the Archbishop of Freiburg.

Many of the congress participants now want to travel to the stations of the Pope's visit in Berlin, Erfurt or Freiburg in two weeks' time. In September 2012, the next church congress "Joy of Faith" will then take place in Aschaffenburg.

Car dealerships: corona makes used cars expensive

the automotive trade could probably sell more at the moment if it had more merchandise.

The prices for used ones have been increasing for months. Consumers are in the mood to buy again – and at car dealers the supply has thinned out during the pandemic. This also has a lot to do with home office.

Date:

Reading time:

NO COMMENTS YET

Used cars are currently expensive. especially diesels cost more in may than they did a year ago, as the latest figures from the deutsche automobil treuhand (DAT) show. And car dealers are also reporting higher prices. The reason is – in a roundabout way – the corona crisis, which has caused a pent-up demand among buyers and a reduced supply in the trade.

"Cars are getting more expensive because there is a shortage", says burkhard weller, managing partner of the weller group, which also sells tens of thousands of used vehicles every year. He estimates the increase at five to seven percent. "Our stocks have never been so low" And it has never been so fast to sell the cars, he says.

An industry survey by DAT also shows a clear shortage of used (see box below). 65 percent of the more than 400 dealers surveyed said that younger vehicles in particular were in short supply. 77 percent reported that it is currently difficult to buy used cars.

Typically, many of the relatively new used cars sold at branded dealerships come from company car and rental fleets. But the rental companies, which usually keep the vehicles for only a few months, had their fleets severely curtailed during the corona crisis and have only recently begun to expand them again. In addition, service cars have not yet returned to the dealer in some cases because they have been driven less, as both weller and thomas peckruhn, owner of the autohaus liebe group and deputy president of the central association of the german motor vehicle trade (ZDK), tell us.

ZDK-vize and skoda-dealer peckruhn: "used are currently a scarce good."

"They were all in the home office and only drove a little", says peckruhn. There have also been fewer daily registrations during the lockdown, he says. "Used ones are a scarce good at the moment" says the ZDK vice president. Therefore, it is not necessary to make them cheap to sell them. But that applies especially to sought-after models, some of which can be ten percent more expensive, he says. For others, however, the prices would not have changed.

And it is not only the young used cars that have increased in price. This continues right through to the older models, emphasizes weller. ansgar klein, head of the German association of independent car dealers (bvfk), also sees corresponding effects. "When the younger car isn’t on the market, people reach for the car that’s a year older. So this pushes all the way through to the bottom", he says.

In the standardized figures of the DAT the effects are somewhat smaller. Three-year-old diesels were around three percent more expensive in may than they were a year ago. There is not much difference in the case of gasoline-powered cars. However, market observers also see the lack of young used.

Dealers agree that prices are unlikely to ease quickly. The chip shortage, which is currently holding back new car production, is also contributing to this, as peckruhn says. And weller estimates: "I would think it will take until the beginning of 2022 for this to normalize."

Leave a Reply Cancel reply