A German
bishop has apologised to the LGBTQ community for the discrimination inflicted
by the Church.
Bishop
Christian Stäblein was speaking before Berlin’s Pride Parade and said he was
“appalled” by how members of the LGBTQ community had been treated.
People have
been subjected to intrusive questions, fired from jobs in the church, and been
told to be celibate.
"Their
rightful place as children of God"
According to
the Irish
Times, Bishop Stäblein, of the Berlin-Brandenburg state church, said he was
“appalled by the stigmatisation we have perpetrated” upon LGBT members and
staff.
He also
denounced a policy where LGBTQ people were also denied pastoral housing, which
he said along with everything else, had compounded discrimination.
He said LGBTQ
people had been denied “their rightful place as children of God in the image of
God” by being excluded adding, “we have to assume that many more people were
harmed by these practices than we are aware of or can document.”
Asking for
forgiveness, the Bishop said, “it is God’s alone to give, and that we bear
responsibility as a community for these wrongs”.
It’s not the
first time that Bishop Stäblein has proven himself an ally to the community.
Last year he reinstated a gay pastor who had experienced discrimination under
Nazi Germany.
Pastor
Friederich Klein spent three years in prison, was stripped of his title and
sent to fight in the Second World War near Leningrad where he went missing in
1944. He was declared dead in 1975.
The
Berlin-Brandenburg state church is one member of Germany’s Evangelical Church
Federation, which have become more and more progressive over the years by
blessing same-sex marriages in 2017.
However, the
conservative Saxon church only offers same-sex couples a private blessing, not
full services.
SOURCE: ATTITUDE MAG
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