Breakaway church gives gay ex-monk what Vatican would deny him: a holy wedding

By Louisa Off and Sarah Marsh

MUNICH – Anselm Bilgri, a former monk and prior at one in all Germany’s most well-known monasteries, needed to depart the Roman Catholic Church to wed his long-term male associate. Now he hopes their wedding ceremony inside a breakaway church will normalise such unions.

Bilgri, 68, and his associate Markus Achter, 41, had been wed in a Munich church on Saturday by a priest of the Previous Catholic Church, which emerged within the Netherlands within the nineteenth century and lets monks marry and permits same-sex relationships.

“I instantly thought: now I've really acquired all seven sacraments, from ordination to marriage,” stated Bilgri, chuckling after the ceremony. “And I would really like it to change into regular.”

Bilgri, who was ordained in 1980 by Joseph Ratzinger, who grew to become Pope Benedict, left the Roman Catholic Church in 2020 on account of frustrations over its failure to modernise – the Vatican doesn't permit monks or same-sex couples to wed.

His was one in all many departures from the Catholic Church in Germany amid anger over abuse scandals and a sense amongst some that the establishment is failing to maintain up with the instances.

That feeling intensified final 12 months after the Vatican determined to not permit monks to bless same-sex unions. The ruling dissatisfied believers who had hoped Pope Francis would soften the laborious line taken on the difficulty by John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI – and never simply in Germany.

Flemish Roman Catholic bishops final month issued a doc successfully permitting the blessing of same-sex unions in defiance of that ruling.

Bilgri ran the brewery at a Munich monastery earlier than turning into prior, or deputy head, of the 900-year-old Andechs Abbey on Bavaria’s “Holy Mountain”, in 1999 co-authoring the guide “Cooking and Therapeutic with Beer”.

“Take this ring and put on it as an indication of affection and faithfulness,” Bilgri stated as he slid a gold ring onto the little finger of Achter’s proper hand in a small church in Munich, each sporting matching black morning coats with white roses of their lapels.

The couple had already wed in a civil ceremony final 12 months.

“I at all times suppose that if it turns into increasingly self-evident, then sooner or later it should not be one thing particular,” stated Achter. “That’s the path we need to go in, and possibly we now have set an indication for that at the moment.”