the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, on Wednesday evening, September 20, in front of Cologne Cathedral, Catholic priests celebrated a blessing ceremony for homosexual and queer couples in front of an audience of about 500 people. The purpose of the celebration was of course not only to give the blessing, but also to express their protest against Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne, who opposes the radical liberalization of the German Catholic Church. What's more, the blessing is an open challenge to the Vatican's resolutions - zarandok.ma .

sang the Beatles' well-known hit, All you need is love Many people burst into tears of happiness and emotion. A few meters away from the participants in the ceremony, a dozen Catholics protested against the ceremony with a banner reading "Let's stay Catholics", but they were surrounded by other counter-protesters and shouted down.

As you remember,

the General Assembly of the German Church's Synodal Way allowed the official blessing of homosexual couples, but the final decision is in the hands of the bishop in each diocese.

The "anti-liberal" (an adjective used by FAZ) Cardinal Woelki also uses this opportunity, while for example

issued mandatory guide

The precedent of the case is that the Cologne archdiocese reprimanded a priest who also gave blessings to homosexual couples. The representative of the Maria 2.0 reform movement, Maria Mesrian, stated that it is pathetic to reprimand a priest who blesses the love of two people.

"There is no theological basis for this: I cannot find a single place in the Gospel where Jesus excludes or rejects a person"

- He told.

Sven Lehmann, the federal government's commissioner for queer affairs, also spoke about the matter, according to whom the opening of the church obeys pressure from below, while

"Archbishop Woelki and the Vatican are light years behind social reality".

You can read about the Cologne event in several places, including the Riposte Catholique portal, which titled its article the telling and thought-provoking Church of Sodom.

Front page photo: Priests presented a mass blessing "all couples in love" on September 20, 2023, in front of Cologne Cathedral - Photo: KNA