c. 2005 Religion News Service
Fed Up With Pilgrims, Owner of House Where Pope Was Born Wants Out
(RNS) Fed up with pilgrims, the owner of the 18th century house in the Bavarian town of Marktl where Pope Benedict XVI was born is looking for a buyer.
“I want my private life back,” Claudia Dandl said.
Dandl, a physiotherapist, said she and her two children no longer answer the door to pilgrims demanding to enter the two-story, former police station, which she bought and renovated six years ago.
Benedict, son of a police officer, was born Joseph Ratzinger in the family’s apartment above the police station at 11 Marktplatz in the center of the town in southern Germany on April, 16, 1927.
“The town is very interested in acquiring the house. We would like to open the birthplace of the pope to pilgrims,” Mayor Hubert Gschwendtner said.
Dandl told reporters she was willing to sell to the highest bidder and she expected the price “to correspond to the historic value of the building.”
Local real estate agents valued the house at about 150,000 euros ($181,500), but if the price that a car once owned by Ratzinger is any indication, the selling price will be considerably higher.
Offered for auction on the German eBay Internet site six days after Ratzinger’s election as pope on April 19, the six-year-old Volkswagen Golf, for which the current owner had paid $11,495, went for $245,620.54 to the Golden Palace Casino of Austin, Tex., on May 5.
The house, built in 1745, has a wooden roof, a facade painted yellow and white and geraniums in its window boxes. Two plaques beside the door proclaim it to be the birthplace not only of the pope but, in 1779, of Georg Lankensperger, inventor of the axle still used for automobile steering wheels.
_ Peggy Polk
Anglicans Endorse Divestment Against Israel
LONDON (RNS) Anglican churches around the world, including the Episcopal Church in the United States, were urged Friday (June 24) to join a growing church-based movement to divest from Israeli companies that support the Palestinian occupation.
The Anglican Consultative Council, a global policy-setting panel for the 77 million-member Anglican Communion, unanimously approved a statement urging divestment that was drafted last year by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network.
The ACC, meeting in Nottingham, England, commended the U.S. church for its “resolve” to pursue divestment, even though it has not formally endorsed divestment. American church leaders were not allowed in the meeting because of sanctions stemming for their pro-gay policies.
The ACC urged the Communion’s 38 provinces to consider divestment, as well as “investment strategies that support the infrastructure of a future Palestinian state.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which had criticized the divestment report two weeks ago, said it was “bitterly disappointed” by the action.
“Israel is (a) democracy and a pluralistic society in which Jews and Arabs, Christians and Muslims have equal rights in the law,” said the board. “These rights are not extended to non-Muslims in many of Israel’s Arab neighbors, sadly. Israel is also a country on a virtual war footing _ not a conventional war, however, but a war of terror characterized by the suicide bomber.”
The board echoed criticisms from many U.S. Jewish groups that divestment is one-sided against Israel and “fundamentally flawed and unbalanced.”
“That Israel alone should be singled out for such treatment, particularly at a time when dialogue is beginning to prevail, shows an inequality in the treatment of the Jewish state which must raise concerns about the Church’s relationship with our community,” said the board’s chief executive, Jon Benjamin.
In the United States, the Presbyterian Church (USA) sparked the divestment movement last summer but won’t make a final decision until next summer. The United Church of Christ is scheduled to debate the issue at its general synod in Atlanta in early July.
_ Robert Nowell and Kevin Eckstrom
Pope Says Secular State Should Not Exclude Christian Values
ROME (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI, paying an historic visit to the president of Italy, praised the “healthy secularism of the state,” but said that separation of church and state should not exclude the ethical values of Christianity.
Benedict drove across the Tiber River and through the historic center of Rome in an open car to call on President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi at the Quirinal Palace, a 16th century papal residence now occupied by the head of the Italian state.
The German-born Benedict was the eighth pope to visit an Italian president in the Quirinal Palace since 1870 when Rome _ the last of the papal states _ fell to the forces of King Victor Emmanuel II and opened the way to a united Italy.
Although Benedict spoke specifically about relations between Italy and the Vatican, his words reflected his wider concern for what he sees as a tendency toward an increasingly secular West to deny its Christian roots.
While insisting the Catholic Church does not seek “privileges or positions of social or economic advantage,” he said it does have an “independent and autonomous” role to play in society.
“A healthy secularism of the state is legitimate,” the pope said. But, he said, “The autonomy of the temporal sphere does not exclude an intimate harmony with the superior and complex needs deriving from an integral vision of man and his eternal destiny.”
Ciampi, who was the first head of state received by Benedict after his election as pope on April 19, said he was proud of Italy’s relations with the Vatican, which he called “an exemplary model of harmonious coexistence and collaboration.”
“With the same pride I affirm, as president of the Republic and as a citizen, the secularism of the Italian Republic,” he added.
The pope said that his strongest concerns as leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics are the “protection of the family founded on marriage,” the “defense of human life from its conception to its natural end” and the “right of parents to a free choice” on the education of their children.
_ Peggy Polk
Russian Church Head Warns of `Obstacles’ to Church Unity
(RNS) Alexy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has politely but bluntly told the World Council of Churches that pro-gay practices by some churches in the WCC are creating obstacles to church unity.
“We see growing divergences in the teaching and practice of church life,” Alexy told the Rev. Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the WCC. “But we should continue the road of collaboration which we have together followed for decades.”
Alexy criticized what he called the “free interpretation” of principles of Christian morality.
Orthodox churches _ with the Russian Orthodox Church the largest among them _ staunchly oppose ordination of gays and lesbians and same-sex marriages and blessings.
The liberal social and political leanings of some Protestant members of World Council, an international fellowship of churches with some 347 member bodies, has long been a source of tension with Orthodox church bodies and some have withdrawn from the council.
While the Russian Orthodox Church did not quit the council, its concerns were key to the 1998 establishment of a special commission to study Orthodox participation in the WCC.
That panel recommended the WCC adopt a consensus procedure for decision-making so that the more numerous Protestant bodies wouldn’t always out vote the Orthodox.
For his part, Kobia said “a new institutional culture is emerging” at the WCC as a result of the Orthodox concerns.
Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk and Kalingrad, the No. 2 Russian Orthodox leader, raised some of the same concerns and pointed to what he called a “growing gap” between churches in the area of theology and ethics.
But he said when the WCC meets in Brazil next year for its ninth assembly, when the recommendations of the special commission will be implemented, it will “open a new page in the history of the ecumenical movement.”
Kobia’s June 18-24 visit followed his June 16 visit with Pope Benedict XVI, and coincided with the Moscow visit of Roman Catholic Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
Benedict, too, is seeking to improve relations with Orthodoxy, especially the Russian Orthodox Church, and has declared a “fundamental commitment” to healing the 1,000-year-old rift between East and West.
The restructuring of the WCC to meet the Orthodox concerns is also aimed at allowing the Vatican to participate more fully in the council.
_ David E. Anderson
Jerusalem Leaders Say No to Local Gay Pride Festival
JERUSALEM (RNS) Israeli gay and lesbian groups vowed to hold their annual gay pride parade in downtown Jerusalem on June 30, despite a decision by city leaders on Thursday (June 23) to cancel the event.
Eitan Mayer, the executive director of the Municipality of Jerusalem, on Thursday told organizers that the city “decided that it would be wrong to allow for Jerusalem Pride to take place.”
The decision to cancel the parade was apparently prompted by an intense campaign by Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders to prevent Worldpride, an international gay and lesbian festival slated for mid-August, from taking place. City officials were unavailable for comment.
Israel gay and lesbian activists recently decided to postpone _ though not cancel _ International WorldPride until next summer out of concern that the 10-day event would not be appropriate at a time when Israelis are deeply divided over the planned withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. The so-called “disengagement” is also scheduled for mid- August.
Earlier, organizers told Religion News Service that the postponement was not in response to religious pressure.
Leaders of the Jerusalem Open House, which organizes the local parade, said they were “confident that the democratic values of freedom of speech and equality will prevail. Pride will take place on June 30, as scheduled.”
A hearing on the fate of the annual parade _ Jerusalem’s fourth _ is slated for Sunday (June 26) in the District Court in Jerusalem.
_ Michele Chabin
Quote of the Day: Ben Chaney, Brother of Civil Rights Slaying Victim
(RNS) “I want to thank God that today we saw Preacher Killen in a prison uniform taken from the courthouse to the jailhouse.”
_ Ben Chaney, younger brother of black Mississippian James Chaney, one of three civil rights workers who was slain in 1964. Chaney was reacting to the 60-year prison sentence given Thursday (June 23) to former Ku Klux Klansman and preacher Edgar Ray Killen for his role in the case. He was quoted by The Washington Post.
KRE/JL END RNS
