Johannes Joachim Degenhardt
Johannes Joachim Cardinal Degenhardt (born January 31, 1926 in Schwelm , Westphalia , † July 25, 2002 in Paderborn ) was Archbishop of Paderborn and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church .
Live and act
Degenhardt grew up in Hagen . The parents were Elly Degenhardt and Julius Degenhardt. He was the second born of 7 children (Marianne, Johannes-Joachim, Werner, Ulrich, Elisabeth, Norbert and Brigitte). In Hagen he attended the humanistic Albrecht Dürer grammar school . One cousin was the singer-songwriter Franz Josef Degenhardt , who shaped the generation of 1968 .
Johannes Joachim Degenhardt was active in the Catholic youth movement Bund New Germany . On the day of Lorenz Jaeger's episcopal consecration , he was arrested by the Gestapo when he organized a youth loyalty rally for the new Paderborn pastor . He had been under their observation for a long time, as he had secretly circulated the sermons of the Münster bishop, Clemens August Graf von Galen, at risk of death . He was held in solitary confinement at the Steinwache Gestapo headquarters in Dortmund for several weeks, imprisoned in a 3 x 1.5 meter cell, beaten by the guards and only released on Christmas 1941 with the threat that he would be sent to the concentration camp if he heard anything from the Time of imprisonment would tell. After his release, he was expelled from high school. During the Second World War he was drafted as an air force helper and became a prisoner of war , from which he was released in 1946. After the war he passed the Abitur and studied philosophy and theology in Paderborn and Munich . On August 6, 1952, he was ordained priest in the High Cathedral in Paderborn by Archbishop Lorenz Jaeger .
Five years as vicar in Brackwede followed . From 1957 he was in charge of the local parish as a parish administrator , then as a parish administrator until Archbishop Jaeger appointed him Prefect of the Archbishop's Collegium Leoninum in Paderborn.
On 28 January 1964, he was at Rudolf Schnackenburg to Dr. theol. obtained his doctorate and then worked as an assistant at the Ruhr University Bochum . In 1965 Degenhardt became a student pastor at the Pedagogical University of Westphalia-Lippe in Paderborn and in February of that year he was the diocesan representative of the Catholic Biblical Works .
Pope Paul VI appointed Degenhardt on March 18, 1968 auxiliary bishop in Paderborn and titular bishop of Vicus Pacati . The motto of Degenhardt's is Surrexit Dominus vere ( The Lord is risen indeed , from the Easter liturgy ). The episcopal ordination received his Lorenz Cardinal Jaeger on 1 May of the same year; Co- consecrators were the Essen bishop Franz Hengsbach and auxiliary bishop Paul Nordhues .
Cardinal Jaeger resigned from his office as Archbishop in early 1973. The cathedral chapter of the Archdiocese of Paderborn then elected Degenhardt as the vicar of the capitol , and Pope Paul VI. appointed him in April 1974 as the new Archbishop of Paderborn. He celebrated his 25th anniversary in this office at the 1999 Liborifest .
In 1994 Degenhardt had declared in front of an audience consisting of members of the diocesan assembly:
“Young women have equal rights and demand that their husbands participate in domestic work [...] And there are dangers for young men [...] that they can no longer withstand their urges afterwards. When young men become more entrusted with caring for young children, constantly seeing, touching, and cleaning naked, exposed bodies, the danger is that they will become unable to resist their desires. The physical contact with the child while caring for them would certainly often be their undoing. And that's why we find that this consequence that many fathers become househusband can also have negative aspects. "
Of these statements, for which he was massively criticized in society, there was a recording on tape, which was quoted in ZEIT , among others .
In 1984 Degenhardt visited the last two German war criminals imprisoned in the Netherlands, Ferdinand von der Fünten and Franz Fischer, and, like many other church representatives, campaigned for an amnesty for them. For this he visited the then Minister of Justice Frits Korthals Altes . He was surprised to find that Degenhardt did not know the details, sent him a German translation of the judgments and never heard from him again.
On October 8, 1991, Archbishop Degenhardt revoked the church teaching license from the priest and university professor Eugen Drewermann after he refused to revoke certain positions that Degenhardt judged to be inconsistent with Catholic teaching. Among other things, Drewermann had interpreted the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus not as biological facts, but as symbolic expressions for describing existentially understood faith. On March 26, 1992 Drewermann was finally suspended from the priesthood. Within the diocese , there had been a lengthy public dispute between the two clergy about fundamental ideological differences.
Appointment as cardinal
On January 28, 2001, Pope John Paul II surprisingly announced the appointment of Archbishop Degenhardt, Bishop Karl Lehmann of Mainz and five other bishops as cardinals , after he had announced the creation of 37 cardinals only a week earlier. Pope John Paul II himself justified the appointment a year later on the occasion of the death of Degenhardt in a letter of condolence from the World Youth Day in Toronto as follows: “With his appointment as cardinal, I wanted to make the loyal testimony of the Paderborn Shepherd visible to the entire world church. “() On February 21, 2001 he accepted the Archbishop of Paderborn into the College of Cardinals as a cardinal priest with the titular church of San Liborio in the largest consistory in recent church history . Degenhardt held various ecclesiastical offices, including chairman of the ecumenical commission of the German Bishops' Conference from 1974 to 1976 .
Death and burial
Degenhardt suddenly died in the early morning of July 25, 2002 at the age of 76 in the archbishop's palace in Paderborn. In the days that followed, thousands passed the cardinal laid out in the Bartholomew Chapel. The burial in the High Cathedral in Paderborn took place on August 3, 2002 in the presence of nine cardinals ( Henryk Gulbinowicz (Breslau), Karl Lehmann (Mainz), Franciszek Macharski (Krakow), Joachim Meisner (Cologne), Joseph Ratzinger (Rome), Leo Scheffczyk (Munich), Adrianus Simonis (Utrecht), Georg Sterzinsky (Berlin) and Friedrich Wetter (Munich)), over 60 (arch) bishops from all over the world and numerous state guests. The entry of the numerous dignitaries into the High Cathedral alone took 20 minutes. The largest funeral ceremony that Paderborn has ever experienced in its history was the legacy of Pope John Paul II. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI. , before, just before that dean of the college of cardinals (November 27, 2002). An unmistakable number of the faithful gave Degenhardt their final conduct in the pontifical request broadcast live on television .
Degenhardt's successor as Archbishop of Paderborn was Hans-Josef Becker in 2003 .
Orders and honors
Cardinal Degenhardt was the bearer of numerous high orders and awards, including an honorary citizen of the city of Paderborn. On October 27, 1993 he was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit with a star by the then North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Johannes Rau . In addition to his early membership in the Sovereign Order of Malta as a Magistral Knight and Chaplain, he was later also a Grand Crusader in the Knight of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem , a papal lay order , corresponding to his cardinal rank . He was also an honorary member of the KDSt.V. Guestfalo-Silesia Paderborn in the CV .
On the tenth anniversary of his death, the square at the old cathedral mechanic in Paderborn, today's city library, was named after him.
literature
- Johannes Joachim Degenhardt, Reinhard Lettmann, Heinrich Reiss: Churches in common responsibility, obedient life. Luther-Verlag Bielefeld 1982, ISBN 3-7858-0277-3 .
- Episcopal service during this time. Johannes Joachim Degenhardt - 25 years bishop. Bonifatius 1993, ISBN 3-87088-785-0 .
- Johannes Joachim Degenhardt, Josef Ernst (Ed.), Stephan Leimgruber (Ed.): Surrexit Dominus vere. The Presence of the Risen One in the Church. Bonifatius-Druckerei, Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-87088-882-2 .
- Hans-Josef Becker , Rainer Beseler (ed.): "The Lord has truly risen". In memory of Johannes Joachim Cardinal Degenhardt. Festschrift. Bonifatius-Verlag, Paderborn 2002, ISBN 3-89710-238-2 .
- Volker de Vry: Johannes Joachim Degenhardt - Insights into 25 years of episcopal activity. Published by the Archbishop's General Vicariate Paderborn, Bonifatius-Verlag, Paderborn 1993 (lecture on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Archbishop of Paderborn in the historical town hall of Paderborn), ISBN 3-87088-802-4 .
- Johannes Kreuzenbeck: Degenhardt, Johannes Joachim. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 25, Bautz, Nordhausen 2005, ISBN 3-88309-332-7 , Sp. 196-199.
Web links
- Literature by and about Johannes Joachim Degenhardt in the catalog of the German National Library
- Karl Cardinal Lehmann: On the farewell to Johannes Joachim Cardinal Degenhardt, Archbishop of Paderborn. Last accessed February 15, 2014.
- Entry on Johannes Joachim Degenhardt on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on August 16, 2016.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Quoted in: Homepage of the International Federation of Non-Denominational People and Atheists, source (1962)
- ↑ Words of the Week , ZEIT Archive of June 24, 1994.
- ↑ Mercy for Mass Murderers , Felix Bohr, Spiegel Online , October 18, 2018.
- ↑ Eugen Drewermann (ed.): What it is actually about: Protocol of a conviction. Munich 1992, ISBN 3-466-20356-2 .
- ↑ Andreas Wiedenhaus: Characterized by "courageous confession". In: The Cathedral. The Archbishop of Paderborn, accessed on March 18, 2013 .
- ↑ Short biography of the German Bishops' Conference, accessed on March 27, 2014.
- ↑ Archbishopric Paderborn on July 25, 2012: A place between the cathedral and living sources
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Lorenz Cardinal Jaeger |
Archbishop of Paderborn 1974-2002 |
Hans-Josef Becker |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Degenhardt, Johannes Joachim |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Cardinal Degenhardt, Johannes Joachim |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German cardinal and archbishop of Paderborn |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 31, 1926 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Schwelm |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 25, 2002 |
| Place of death | Paderborn |