Roman Catholic migrant communities

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Roman Catholic migrant congregations, also known as (foreign) missions or native-speaking congregations, offer pastoral care for Catholic migrants in their mother tongue. This pastoral care for migrants represents an additional offer of the Roman Catholic Church for the immigrants, who can also live their faith in the local community in which they live.

Migrant communities in the Federal Republic of Germany

There are currently around 400 migrant communities in Germany. The largest language groups are Croatian, Italian and Polish. According to the German Bishops' Conference (DBK), there were 96 Croatian, 90 Italian, 59 Polish, 38 Spanish and 28 Portuguese migrant communities in 2008 . The congregations are mostly headed by priests from their respective countries of origin. Pastoral workers, religious sisters, secretaries, also often immigrants, support the priests. Some migrant communities are multicultural, such as the Spanish-speaking or English communities. The dioceses assume the personnel costs, provide community rooms and other resources. The migrant communities usually do not have their own churches, but use the churches of the (German-speaking) local communities.

How many Catholics use the migrant communities is unclear. It is also uncertain how many Catholics in Germany have a migration background . According to the first results of the 2011 census, a quarter of people with foreign citizenship are Catholic. According to DBK estimates, almost every fifth Catholic has a migrant background. A study by the Criminological Research Institute Lower Saxony (KFN) on children and adolescents in Germany in 2007/08 showed that more than a fifth of the Catholic children and adolescents surveyed come from immigrant families. These are significantly more religious than Catholic children and young people without a migration background.

History in the Federal Republic of Germany

Migrant communities have existed in Germany around the beginning of the 20th century, when the Catholic Church temporarily offered Polish migrants special pastoral care structures. At that time, the aim was to quickly integrate the Polish believers into the local congregations.

The recruitment agreements with initially predominantly Catholic workers from southern Europe since 1955 - from Italy , Spain , Portugal , Yugoslavia - asked the dioceses how they should provide pastoral support to the newcomers. The comparatively wealthy church decided to recruit priests from the respective countries and set up special structures for the faithful. There were pragmatic and theological reasons for this. The church also assumed - like the social mainstream - that most employees would only stay in Germany temporarily.

When it became clear that many of the immigrants would stay permanently, criticism of the migrant pastoral care was raised. It was referred to as a “minor church” or “alibi” for old-time Catholics so that they would not have to deal with migrants and refugees.

Today, some dioceses are reforming their pastoral care for migrants, although no more detailed research is available. These reform efforts can also be related to general personnel and financial deficiencies, so that the dioceses are also changing the pastoral care of migrants in the course of a fundamental reorientation. In addition, in 2003 the DBK took up the general integration discourse and emphasized that migrant communities should be part of the local communities.

The guidelines of the Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese can serve as a prime example of clearly regulated integration into diocesan and parish structures. These are the result of a reform process that also looked at pastoral care for migrants. This was not fundamentally called into question, but regular contact between local immigrant Catholics was identified as necessary.

Coordination of the migrant communities

The national director for pastoral care for foreigners coordinates the migrant communities nationwide. He is based in the secretariat of the German Bishops' Conference . For each language group there is a delegate, who is mostly a priest from the respective country of origin, who networks and coordinates the language group. Responsibility for the migrant communities is regulated differently in the individual dioceses. Mostly there is a “foreigner advisor” under the bishop who is responsible for the pastoral care of migrants; the migrant congregations are often not involved in the structure of the dioceses and the respective committees.

Theological justification of the pastoral care of migrants

The right of migrants to keep their mother tongue in pastoral work was developed by the Catholic Church over centuries. The figure of the migrant has a central position in Christianity, regardless of his religion, because it recognizes in him very own experiences. Pope John Paul II proclaimed: "The Church has always seen in the migrant the image of Christ who said: 'I was a stranger and homeless and you welcomed me' (Mt 25:35)."

The Catholic Church recognizes for its members that faith always manifests itself in culturally specific symbols and practices. This becomes even clearer when the Catholic Church allowed services to be held in the local language instead of Latin. In the early 1960s, for example, the Congregation of Bishops ascribed a special authenticity to mother tongue pastoral care.

The first codified canon law explicitly mentions special pastoral care for migrants in 1917. If the church is organized territorially in principle, canon law allows competences to be organized according to personal aspects, for example a common language or nationality.

It is disputed whether the migrant communities represent a transition structure, a bridge into the immigration society or whether they should exist in the long term.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jenni Winterhagen and Dietrich Thränhardt: Three Catholic transnationalisms - Italy, Croat and Spanish Immigrants Compared. Working paper of the Research Center for Civic Engagement, Berlin 2013; modified version in: Dirk Halm and Zeynep Sezgin (eds.): Migration and Organized Civil Society. Rethinking National Policy. Routledge, Oxon, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-415-69198-7 , pp. 175-194.
  2. ↑ a b Jenni Winterhagen: Transnantionaler Katholizismus. The Croatian migrant communities between national commitment and functional integration (= Studies on Migration and Minorities, Volume 28). Lit Verlag, Münster 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-12346-6 .
  3. ↑ a b Bernd Gottlob: The missionaries of foreign workers in Germany. A situation and behavior analysis against the background of church norms. Schöningh, Munich, Paderborn, Vienna 1978, ISBN 3-506-70216-5 , also: Dissertation, University of Münster (Westphalia), 1977.
  4. ↑ Census database of the 2011 census .
  5. ↑ Pastoral care for foreigners. Article from kathisch.de.
  6. ↑ Dirk Baier, Christian Pfeiffer, Susann Rabold, Julia Simonson, Cathleen Kappes: Children and young people in Germany: experiences of violence, integration, media consumption. Second report on the joint research project of the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the KFN ( Memento from August 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (= research report , No. 109). Criminological Research Institute Lower Saxony eV (KFN), Hanover 2010.
  7. ^ Herbert Leuninger: A minor church or unity in diversity? The parishes of Catholics with other mother tongues in the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Klaus Barwig and Dietmar Mieth (eds.): Migration and human dignity. Facts, analyzes and ethical criteria. Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1987, ISBN 3-7867-1302-2 , pp. 140-157.
  8. ↑ a b Monika Scheidler: Intercultural learning in the community. Analyzes and orientations for catechesis under conditions of cultural difference (= Faith Communication Series Zeitzeichen, Volume 11). Schwabenverlag, Ostfildern 2002, ISBN 3-7966-1084-6 , also: Habilitation thesis, University of Tübingen, 2001, p. 114.
  9. ^ German Bishops' Conference: One Church in many languages ​​and peoples. Guidelines for pastoral care for Catholics of other mother tongue. March 13, 2003, accessed May 18, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Guidelines for pastoral care with Catholics of other mother tongues in the pastoral care units of the Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese. Archived from the original on July 18, 2014 ; accessed on June 1, 2017 .
  11. ^ Diocesan Council Rottenburg-Stuttgart: The parishes for Catholics of other mother tongues in the pastoral care units. Concept for networking in the pastoral care unit. ( Memento of July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) 2001
  12. ↑ a b c Cristina Fernández Molina: Catholic communities with other mother tongues in the Federal Republic of Germany. Canonical position and pastoral situation in the dioceses in the context of European and German migration policy. Berlin 2005, also: Dissertation, University of Bochum, 2004, digitized version
  13. ↑ Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care for Migrants and People on the Move: Instruction Erga migrantes caritas Christi (Christ's love for migrants) 2004.