Finance

Lea Ackermann (71), missionary sister and champion against trafficking in women, received the 2008 Romano Guardini Prize in Munich on Tuesday. The Catholic Academy of Bavaria thus honored the life's work of an "internationally highly respected woman who, out of Christian responsibility, stands up for the victims of human trafficking, forced prostitution and sex tourism.".

The grasping religious was an exemplary champion of women's rights, he said. Sister Lea was impressed that even Romano Guardini (1885-1968) had been appalled by the marketing of the female body in advertising. The prize money of 5.000 euros to the SOLWODI (Solidarity with Women in Distress) association, which she founded. SOLWODI was founded in Kenya in 1985 and has been active in Germany since 1988, currently at twelve locations. Among the 46 full-time staff members are 16 sisters from 13 different religious congregations. The association takes care of victims of human trafficking. He gives them shelter, organizes their medical care and tries to convince them to report to the police. Unfortunately, many potential witnesses are still deported from Germany before they can testify against the perpetrators in court, the nun lamented. She would like to see johns of forced prostitutes punished as in Sweden.

Conference to prepare the "synodal way" © Harald Oppitz (KNA)

In the Catholic Church, the frequency of conferences and consultations is increasing. Nine days after the "extended joint conference of members of the German Bishops' Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics", the 69 members of the Bishops' Conference will meet for their autumn plenary session in the eastern Hessian bishop's town starting Monday.

"Whoever builds a wall becomes a prisoner of the wall he builds. This is a universal law," he said in a pre-recorded interview by journalist Jordi Evole, broadcast Sunday evening by Spanish television station La Sexta and reproduced in Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia (online edition).

"Die Leut stinkt das alles," says poultry farmer Georg Heitlinger in broad Swabian. Heitlinger wants the compulsory levy, which is to be paid nationwide by around 380.000 farmers have to pay for joint advertising, abolish it. The German Farmers' Association is fighting for the continued existence of central agricultural marketing. The Federal Constitutional Court has the last word.

Every farmer pays into a fund e Since no farmer can afford his own advertising, every farmer pays into a fund to promote sales. This will primarily finance the Central Marketing Association of the German Agricultural Industry (CMA) and the Central Market and Price Reporting Office (ZMP). The CMA is mainly responsible for advertising measures, while the ZMP is mainly responsible for price transparency.According to DBV data, a farmer pays, for example, 0.1 cents per liter of milk or 51 cents per pig. This means that the sales fund receives around 90 million euros a year. While the DBV estimates that an average farmer pays only about 360 euros a year, Heitlinger expects to pay 800 to 1000 euros a year. "The majority of farmers don't even know what they have to pay for the CMA," he says indignantly.

Ken Follett © Arne Dedert

CBA: They had a deeply religious childhood, but then completely turned away from church and faith. Today you are an atheist – why are you still interested in the topic of church and religion?

Follett: I love going to church; it's a spiritual experience for me. I love the architecture, the church music. I like to hear the words of the Bible. But I just don't believe in God or anything that's in the Bible.
CBA: Are you interested in the situation of the Church today? What do you think about Pope Francis?
Follett: Pope Francis is doing the church a lot of good; he follows a very conservative pope I didn't like. And I like Francis' answer to the question about homosexuals: who gets to judge that? This is the way Jesus would have responded. I am a kind of fan of his.
CBA: Your new book is also about the fight for religious freedom. But that was centuries ago. Today people are still struggling – how do you view the current world situation, terrorism and killing justified by religion?
Follett: One reason that brought me to this story was that the religious wars of the 16. Twenty-first century echoes have in the 21. Century. It is not the same, but there are some parallels. We mustn't be too pessimistic, we mustn't think that nothing has changed, because in the end Catholics and Protestants don't kill each other anymore. On the other hand, there are still many religiously motivated murders in many parts of the world. The struggle goes on.
CBA: If you've seen so many cathedrals, surely you've been to a German church or two – is there a favorite?
Follett: I think the church I've visited most often in Germany is Cologne Cathedral. It's a beautiful church, but most of all my publishing house is in Cologne, so I have a lot of opportunities to visit. Every time I'm in Cologne, I go to the cathedral. I love him, he's wonderful. But in Berlin there is a very different church, I think it's called Dom, which is completely different, but also very impressive, very special. These are the two that I know. I have been to many other churches, such as in Vienna. In any case, St. Stephen's Cathedral is one of my favorites.
CBA: And the cathedral in Kingsbridge?
Follett: If you like, I have built them. It is an invented cathedral that became very important in my life. And in "The Foundation of Eternity," in the first scene when Ned comes home, the very first thing he does is go to the cathedral.
CBA: There's something fascinating about church buildings for you, isn't there?? They also live in an old rectory…
Follett: We bought this house because it was the right house in the right place. It's on the outskirts of Stevenage, the town my wife was a member of parliament for. It's very close to a big castle, Knebworth House, and in the park is the medieval church that belongs to that castle, St. Mary's, which is tiny, but very endearing. My house is the house where the priests of this church lived for hundreds of years. The church sold the house in 1929.
CBA: So the house itself tells a long story?
Follett: You see, there used to be a lord in the castle, and his eldest son inherited the castle and all the money. And if he had had a younger son, what could he do. No money, no castle, so he became a priest. Some of those aristocratic priests didn't take their work very seriously. They had some income from the church, and I fear that some of these men lived more for pleasure than for God. Consequently, my house is very beautiful.
CBA: You write pretty thick tomes. Reading books like that is actually a pretty lonely business, isn't it. Who reads such things in such fast moving times?
Follett: It's been said that no one has time to read these days; after all, a tweet only has 140 characters. But I found out that wasn't true. When people love a book, they don't stop reading it. I sometimes get tweets from readers telling me, "I'm so sad I finished reading 'The Foundation of Eternity'". Why didn't they write it longer?
CBA: Why is reading so important?
Follett: Because it is magical. You read the story and you know it's fiction. These people never existed, but when you read, you are frightened, your heart beats faster, maybe you have tears in your eyes. And if it's a creepy story, you might even lock the door so no one can get in. It's magical, it's a miracle because the story never happened. We love that kind of thing.
CBA: Why?
Follett: I think it goes back deep into childhood. I think I was reading to my son when he was just nine months old. He couldn't even speak properly. I read him a very simple story, just a few words and a few pictures. And his face brightened, he got lost in the story. You can see it in the children's faces. And when one is finished, the children say: Read again. That's the experience we seek in literature: to be so fascinated that the rest of the world becomes unimportant.
CBA: What do you like to read most?
Follett: I like various things, especially perhaps novels from the 19th century. The twentieth century as Dickens, Eliot, Jane Austen, Balzac, Zola, Flaubert, Madame Bovary. That was the golden age of the novel. And I always come back to these novels. But I also read bestsellers, thrillers, I love Lee Child, Patricia Cornwell.

Syria, Rwanda, Bosnia, South Sudan: Time and again, women are raped en masse in war – to weaken political opponents, hurt religious groups or simply to humiliate them. In order to be able to respond appropriately to sexualized war crimes, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution 15 years ago, on 31 December 2009, to establish a new UN Human Rights Council. October 2000, the resolution 1325. In it, for the first time, parties to the conflict were called upon to protect the rights of women.

Interviewer: What then connects the Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro with the evangelical churches??

Prof. Gunda Werner (Institute for Dogmatics at the Faculty of Catholic Theology, Karl Franzens University, Graz): Very roughly speaking, one can first state that what connects him personally with evangelicals is that he himself is a convert. He was Catholic himself and converted to an evangelical church in 2016.

Ingo Bruggenjurgen © Ide Lodige (DR)

Church resignations on the rise © dpa

Now, when all the world is talking about Brexit, it may be allowed to take a teeny-tiny moment to look at the day-to-day church exit – even if much is quite different here. There is no cut-off date for choosing when to leave Christianity family behind. Consequently, there is no "Black Friday", when the Vatican and church administrations in this country rub their eyes in amazement because the majority of God's people refuse to obey him. But at some point, many Christians simply have had enough.

A California court has approved the Archdiocese of Los Angeles' payment of record compensation to victims of clergy sexual exploitation. The US channel CNN reported on the settlement accepted on Monday. Court agreed to settlement between lawyers for more than 500 plaintiffs and Catholic Church. Accordingly, the archdiocese is to pay $660 million to men and women abused by pedophile priests. The money is to be paid out by December.

With John J. Geoghan made the inconceivable public: when the priest was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2002, the Catholic Church in the U.S. faced the worst crisis in its history. The clergyman had sexually abused children and teenagers for decades. Dozens of other cases subsequently became public. Geoghan is no longer alive. Church still battling shadows of the past. And for reparations. Now an archdiocese is paying a record amount of damages to their abuse victims.

The Melbourne prosecutor's office has recommended that police file charges against the Vatican's finance minister, Australian media reported Wednesday. Police had said they would carefully consider the prosecutor's recommendation.

Meanwhile, in Rome, Australian Cardinal Pell protested his innocence in an interview with Australian television station 9News. However, he will "of course" cooperate with authorities, Pell said. The cardinal had already been questioned by Australian police officers in Rome in October 2016 about the abuse allegations. Two men over 40 years old accuse Pell of sexually assaulting them at a swimming pool in Ballarat in the 1970s. At the time, Pell was a priest in the city.