Joint Communiqué of the Holy See Press Office and the Bishops’ Conference of Germany

Today, in the Vatican, representatives of the Roman Curia and the Bishops’ Conference of Germany met to continue the dialogue initiated during the ad Limina Visit of German bishops in November 2022 and continued with a first exchange on 26 July 2023.

Today’s meeting, which lasted the entire day, took place in a positive and constructive atmosphere. Some open theological questions, raised in the documents of the Synod path of the Church in Germany, were discussed. This enabled differences and convergences to be identified, following the method adopted in the final Synthesis Report of the universal Church of October 2023. A regular exchange between the representatives of the Bishops’ Conference of Germany and the Holy See on the further work of the Synodal path and the Synodal Committee was agreed upon. The German Bishops made it clear that this work will seek to identify concrete ways of exercising Synodality in the Church in Germany, in accordance with the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, the provisions of Canon Law and the fruits of the Synod of the universal Church, and then submit them to the Holy See for approval. The Parties agreed to hold their next meeting before the summer of 2024.

For the Roman Curia, the meeting was attended by Cardinals Victor Fernández, Kurt Koch and Pietro Parolin, Robert F. Prevost, O.S.A., and Arthur Roche, and Archbishop Filippo Iannone, O. Carm. The speakers for the Bishops’ Conference of Germany were Bishops Georg Bätzing, Stephan Ackerman, Michael Gerber, Peter Kohlgraf, Bertram Meier, Franz-Josef Overbeck, respectively president of the Bishops’ Conference of Germany and chairs of the Episcopal Commissions for the Liturgy, Vocations and Ecclesial Services, for Pastoral Care, for the Universal Church, and for Faith, as well as the secretary general, Dr. Beate Gilles, and the spokesperson of the Bishops’ Conference of Germany, Matthias Kopp.