It has been revealed that Germany’s most senior Catholic cardinal has moved to standardise the blessing of same-sex couples in his archdiocese after an April 20 report in Die Tagespost, a step that underscores widening divisions within the German Church over the limits of pastoral reform and the interpretation of recent Vatican guidance.
In a directive to clergy, Cardinal Reinhard Marx instructed that a pastoral framework developed through Germany’s reform process should serve as the basis for future practice in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.
