Bishop expelled after housing-costs inquiry

Pope Francis greets the crowd Wednesday as he driven to his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.
Pope Francis greets the crowd Wednesday as he driven to his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis expelled a German bishop from his diocese Wednesday pending the outcome of a church inquiry into the bishop’s $43 million new residence complex.

The Vatican didn’t say how long Bishop Franz-PeterTebartz-van Elst, 53, would spend away from the diocese of Limburg, but it refused calls to remove him permanently. It gave no information on where he would go or what he would do.

The Vatican said the bishop was leaving pending the outcome of a German church investigation into the expenditures and his role in the case. Fellow bishops and lay Catholics in the diocese, however, expressed doubt that he would ever be able to return.

“This is a crisis of confidence that will be hard to overcome,” said the dean of the cathedral chapter, Guenther Geis.

Limburg’s vicar general, the Rev. Wolfgang Roesch, who had been due to start Jan. 1, will instead begin work immediately and will run the diocese during Tebartz-van Elst’s absence, the Vatican said.

At the center of the investigation is the price tag for the construction of a new bishop’s residence complex and related renovations. Tebartz-van Elst has defended the expenditures, saying the bill was actually for 10 projects and that there were additional costs because the buildings were under historical protection.

But in a country where Martin Luther launched the Reformation five centuries ago in response to what he said were excesses and abuses within the church, the outcry has been enormous. The perceived lack of financial transparency has also struck a chord because a church tax in Germany raises billions of dollars a year for the German church.

Tebartz-van Elst’s leadership style has also been criticized. In August and September, more than 4,000 people signed an open letter to the bishop criticizing what they considered his authoritarian style.

The head of the German bishops’ conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, has been particularly blunt in his criticism of the expenditures and the credibility problem it was causing the church.

He said the “decisive” turning point came when Hamburg prosecutors earlier this month asked a court to levy an unspecified fine against the bishop for false testimony in a related case.

Zollitsch has said the church commission will investigate the costs of the renovation, the financing and how decisions about the restoration were made. Canon lawyers will determine whether Tebartz-van Elst violated church law regarding the use of money, Zollitsch said.

In a statement Wednesday, Zollitsch pledged that the commission would do its work “quickly and carefully.”

The Vatican stressed that Francis made the decision based on “objective” information, suggesting that the Vatican wasn’t being swayed by the popular outcry. Francis has also made it clear that he expects his bishops to live simply, setting as an example his own humble lifestyle.

Tebartz-van Elst met with Francis on Monday.

Information for this article was contributed by Daniela Petroff of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 10/24/2013

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