Pastoral care abroad
The foreign pastoral care for German-speaking Christians from the churches operated, it serves the pastoral and social care of the church members in other countries live. It is led by the congregations abroad in the respective mother tongue and looked after by a mother tongue priest . In addition to the resident migrant believers, the institutions for foreign pastoral care and foreign service abroad also look after travelers, long-term vacationers, professionals and pilgrims . In Germany, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and the German Bishops' Conference (dbk), along with other religious communities , maintain German-speaking congregations abroad .
International work of the EKD
The work abroad and the associated pastoral care of the Evangelical Church in Germany look back on a long tradition . Some of the origins can be traced back to the Reformation . Here, too, the German immigrants in foreign countries provided the impetus; for example, the Evangelical-Protestant Christians in South America and South Africa began building their church congregations with German-speaking church services . The formal connection to the home church in Germany developed in the middle of the 19th century with the foreign diaspora care, which became a large and common field of work for the Protestant regional churches in Germany.
After 1945 the founded EKD took over the main responsibility for the German-language preaching and pastoral care abroad. In its basic order - under the term "work abroad" - it stipulated: "The EKD promotes the service of Protestant Christians of German language or origin abroad in partnership with their churches and parishes or performs this service in community with other churches." (Basic order Article 17, Paragraph 3) The Protestant church congregations abroad exist today in almost all capitals, cultural and commercial metropolises in the world. Around 135 pastors sent by the EKD are currently serving in them.
The current bishop abroad is Petra Bosse-Huber.She has been Head of Department IV Ecumenism and International Work in the EKD Church Office in Hanover since 2014 . The EKD looks after 140 German-speaking congregations and partner churches in almost every country in the world and celebrates German-speaking Protestant holiday services in other European countries.
Foreign pastoral care of the Roman Catholic Church
At the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 , under Pope Innocent III. (1198–1216), the bishops decided to regulate public services in places with a mixed language population that use different rites . In Germany, the Raphaels-Werk "Service for people on the move" was founded on the 21st Katholikentag (September 10-14, 1871) in Mainz . He advises and accompanies emigrants , people working abroad, refugees , binational couples and returnees. In Italy it was Giovanni Battista Scalabrini who founded the religious order “ Congregatio Scalabriniana ” in Piacenza in 1887 , which took care of the pastoral and charitable aspects of the Italians who had emigrated to America . In 1880 Franziska Xaviera Cabrini founded the order of the " Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart ". At the instigation of Pope Leo XIII. In 1888 she emigrated to the United States of America to organize charitable and religious work among immigrants of Italian origin.
Pope Pius X. (1903–1914) set up a section for pastoral care abroad in the former Consistorial Congregation, the current Congregation for Bishops . The next and most important step was taken by Pope Pius XII. (1939–1958) in 1952 with the Apostolic Constitution " Exsul familia " in which he made the pastoral care of emigrants, displaced persons and refugees by priests in their native language compulsory .
The Catholic Foreign Secretariat of the dbk
The Catholic Foreign Secretariat of the German Bishops' Conference is responsible for German-speaking Catholic Christians. The secretariat describes its mission as follows: “It has the task of offering pastoral care for German-speaking Catholics who live abroad for a wide variety of reasons, sometimes only for weeks, sometimes permanently. In addition to the celebration of the sacraments, the opportunity to live one's faith abroad in one's mother tongue plays an important role ”. The foreign secretariat established by the German bishops in 1921 had its seat in Frankfurt until 1954 and then moved to Bonn . The dbk and the EKD work together in the so-called ecumenical metropolitan pastoral care.
Organizationally, the Catholic Foreign Secretariat is part of the Migration Commission of the German Bishops' Conference, chaired by Archbishop Stefan Heße . Auxiliary Bishop Matthias König was appointed as the representative of the German Bishops' Conference for pastoral care abroad in 2016 , and Peter Lang is the head of the foreign secretariat.
Web links
- Britta Wellnitz, German Evangelical Congregations Abroad , JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck) , Tübingen , 2003, ISBN 3-16-147976-9 .
- Evangelical Church in Germany - International
- Catholic foreign secretariat of the German Bishops' Conference
Individual evidence
- ↑ Basic Regulations of November 20, 2003 ( Memento of July 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Compare web links: Britta Wellnitz
- ↑ The Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Apostolic Constitution "Exsul familia" (Latin)
- ↑ auslandsseelsorge.de
