Ecumenical Church Congress 2003
From May 28 to June 1, 2003, the first Ecumenical Church Congress in the current sense took place in Berlin , and in 1971 Augsburg had already hosted the Ecumenical Whitsun meeting .
prehistory
On November 14, 1996, the presidia of the German Evangelical Church Congress (DEKT) and the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) decided to jointly organize an ecumenical church convention in the period from 2002 to 2004 . The 1st Ecumenical Church Congress in 2003 was the first joint event of the DEKT and the ZdK together with members of other denominations in the “Working Group of Christian Churches”. The slogan of the Kirchentag was “You shall be a blessing”. The Evangelical President was Elisabeth Raiser , the Catholic President Hans Joachim Meyer .
The praesidia of DEKT and ZdK defined the tasks and goals of the Ecumenical Church Congress in a policy paper in 2000. They named the Bible and the belief in the Triune God as common foundations. The participants in the Ecumenical Church Congress should bear witness to their faith and, despite all differences, openly approach one another. At the same time, Catholics and Protestants wanted to assume their responsibility for society and the world together and to raise their voices collectively in order to be heard clearly in public.
Procedure and content
According to the organizers' wishes, new steps on the way to unity should be sought at the Berlin Ecumenical Church Congress. This proved to be the greatest challenge, as demonstrated by the example of communion together. Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the Roman Catholic prohibition of intercommunion in advance, but not the receipt of communion by individual believers who do not belong to the Roman Catholic Church. The Church from Below initiative invited Christians of all denominations to the Gethsemane Church to two communion services on the fringes of the church convention. At one, the theology professor emeritus Gotthold Hasenhüttl celebrated according to the Roman Catholic rite and explicitly invited all those present to communion. He was then banned from exercising his priesthood . In 2006 his church license to teach was revoked. The other service was celebrated according to the evangelical rite; the priest Bernhard Kroll assisted in distributing the elements and was suspended by his bishop Mixa because of his participation in the evangelical supper.
Largely unnoticed, an official communal Lord's Supper also took place during the Ecumenical Church Congress in Berlin , albeit without the participation of the Roman Catholic Church . The Protestant Bishop Maria Jepsen and the Old Catholic Bishop Joachim Vobbe celebrated the Eucharist / Last Supper together, as an agreement to this effect has been made between the two churches since 1985.
As part of the Kirchentag, representatives of 16 churches in Germany adopted a Charter oecumenica . It contains a commitment to closer cooperation.
Another highlight of the lay meeting was the visit of the Dalai Lama . 20,000 visitors greeted the spiritual leader of the Buddhist Tibetans with applause that lasted for minutes in the forest stage .
Over 200,000 season tickets were sold for the Kirchentag. Around 400,000 people came to Berlin to kick off the “Evening of Encounter”.
Around 200,000 believers took part in the final service.