Leaders

Now Luis Moreno Ocampo can finally show what he can do. Judges have given the green light for his first trial as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The trial of Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga for genocide and crimes against humanity is the first case of the World Court, whose face Moreno Ocampo has shaped since 2003. After a long legal tug-of-war, Lubanga's trial is scheduled to begin on January 26. January.

For months, procedural errors and problems with the release of witness statements had made it questionable whether the trial would even take place. The International Court of Justice and its first chief prosecutor were threatened with a heavy defeat. Moreno Ocampo, his critics say, has made tactical mistakes. The 56-year-old Argentine is not the man to meticulously prepare a case, he said. He sweeps aside the accusations with a casual wave of his hand. "In Argentina, in the trial against the junta, we had no documents either," and a fine smile curled his mouth in his three-day beard.Moreno Ocampo caused the most stir so far when he accused Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir of genocide this summer and sought an international arrest warrant – the first against a sitting head of state. "The law is above politics," Moreno Ocampo told assembled judges of the international courts in The Hague. That goes down well with the highest men and women of the law. His task was to obtain justice. Here's why he wants to bring al-Bashir to the world court for atrocities in Darfur. "How many more women have to be raped before I can put him on trial?"Moreno Ocampo relishes dramatic performances and, in his heavily Spanish-tinged English, puts the moral right on his side in terse sentences. But in court, only evidence counts, and politicians worry about peace. In this field of tension moves the elegant jurist. Judges have not yet decided whether to grant his request and actually ie an arrest warrant for al-Bashir. That depends on whether Ocampo can produce sufficient evidence.

Interviewer: What do you think of this action by parts of your party??

Ramelow: This is not an action. This is simply a clarification and a clear statement: that there will be no protest actions in parliament, so there will be no negative situations here. Quite the opposite. I myself will be listening to the Pope's speech in the gallery, together with the representative of Germany's liberal Jews and the Central Council of Muslims. And we will have a reception before that by our parliamentary group leader Gregor Gysi. And I think it's fair and right that those in my parliamentary group who say they have no inner relationship to the faith or to the papacy, that those who say: we will then also not participate in the meeting. I think it is up to everyone – and not a compulsory event, but those who are also there from the inner heart will listen. And those who have problems with, for example, the Vatican's sexual harassment, will do what is their right, they will demonstrate at another place in Berlin.
Interviewer: A main concern of the critics is it yes that church and/or. Church representatives in the Bundestag have no business – that religion and politics should not mix. A justified criticism?

"Economy and jobs" are number one ie for U.S. in 2012 presidential election year. This is what surveys show, this is what experts proclaim. But in recent weeks, Republican presidential contenders are bringing alternative spark to the campaign: traditional family values, freedom of faith and the right understanding of God for a president of the United States.

Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger praised Munich Archbishop Reinhard Marx's push before the Bundestag for stricter church guidelines against sexual abuse. The minister reiterated the need for society as a whole to come to terms with past cases and to ensure better prevention. The minister emphasized that her concern with the ie of abuse had been to enforce the state's right to punish from the very beginning. She called it "quite important" to give the information to the public prosecutor's office in the case of clues "that become somewhat solidified". Union speakers addressed the handling of the Catholic Church and vehemently affirmed that abuse is not an ecclesiastical problem, but a societal one. Most cases occur in the family environment. Alexander Funk (CDU) deplored "infamous" attempts to portray the church as an institution in which the abuse of children is virtually inevitable. It would be just as infamous to ascribe joint responsibility to the Greens simply because a working group of the party had advocated sex with minors in 1985. Green parliamentary group leader Renate Kunast makes "unbearable" comments on the role of the church, he said. His party colleague Michael Grosse-Bromer urged punishment of perpetrators as criminals and pleaded for longer statutes of limitations. He also objected to the impression that it is a problem of the Catholic Church. In contrast, the Green politician Christian Strobele said that there was certainly abuse in many different institutions. But the decisive factor is how the church deals with criticism. "In many cases, strong criticism is in order there."Christine Lambrecht (SPD) referred to demands of her parliamentary group to extend the statute of limitations in civil law to 30 years and in criminal law to 20 years. At the same time, she affirmed that politics should not only rely on generalities and round tables. Thus an investigation commission in the Bundestag is necessary, which should determine the extent of cases barred by the statute of limitations and report publicly on it. CSU legal politician Stephan Mayer from Altotting stressed that there must be zero tolerance for "terrible, inhumane, barbaric misdeeds. The Catholic Church had to fulfill its responsibility and would do so. He rated the decision of the Bavarian bishops as outstanding.

The Catholics of Graubunden, Schwyz and Zurich experienced a very unusual day on Monday: Amedee Grab, the beloved former bishop of Chur, died at 89 – and the resignation of his successor Vitus Huonder (77) was accepted by Pope Francis. An emotional balancing act in the explosive Swiss diocese.

Benedictine Grab led the diocese from 1998 to 2007. In Chur, he took on the difficult succession of the extremely conservative current Archbishop of Vaduz/Liechtenstein, Wolfgang Haas (1988/90-1997), against whom many Chur Catholics had run up a storm.

Gregor Gysi is convinced that the major churches in Germany have a unique role in communicating values. At present, only they are still able to "formulate values and moral standards in a halfway general way," said the leader of the parliamentary group of the Left Party on Thursday in Berlin. The political left is currently not in a position to do this. Politics generally and media are there overtaxed. Gysi went on to praise the solidarity among Christians.

"A godless society would be a society without value." So it was no coincidence that the two churches had presented the best poverty report in Germany, he said. That is why, as someone who is not religious, he says: "A godless society would be a society without values." He commented at the presentation of the book "Maximum. How the Pope is changing Germany" by journalist Martin Lohmann, which will go on sale in the next few days. The 59-year-old emphasized that he is an atheist in the sense that he does not believe in God; however, he does not fight religious beliefs or convictions. He went on to express hope for changes in the church's sexual morality, saying that otherwise he would see the acceptance of church values in jeopardy.Gysi expressed his disappointment that Pope Benedict XVI. had been only in Bavaria during his second visit to Germany in August 2006. He would have liked "an excursion into other areas," he said. In response to Lohmann's suggestion that he communicate this to the Pope, the left-wing politician said: "And then I would still like to speak to him.

Dear sisters, dear brothers! After 90 years of the Fatima movement, is the message of Fatima finished?? Or have 60 years of Fatima atonement crusade become an object of the past? And are we today to the 30. For the last time gathered in Einsiedeln for a Marian celebration? Is the message of Mary done for in a Europe that is becoming larger and more united?? – We will have to say: Quite the contrary! Europe threatens to cut itself off from its roots. Europe is in the process of incomprehensibly blocking the source from which its rich cultural and civilizational life has developed. Europe wants to avoid the name of God from its catch and in it the appeal to Jesus Christ. The great prayer leader and writer Reinhold Schneider wrote in the last years of the war: "Only the prayers can still succeed in stopping the sword above our heads."The word can still be repeated today because of its topicality: "Only the prayerful can still succeed in saving Europe from its self-mutilation!" It seems from the catastrophes of the 20. Having learned nothing at the beginning of the twentieth century! And that is why the Fatima message of prayer and penance remains the only means of salvation that can preserve our Christian Europe and thus the non-European Christian civilization. In this, Mary is indispensable to us as a point of orientation, helper and prayer. 1. Man is conceived and called into existence by God as the crown of creation. Mary, however, is the crown of the human race, so that we can say: She is the crown of the crown of creation. We must work with it more intensely and let it give us orientation more than ever before. Because the world as a creation comes from the loving hand of God, it is marked and marked by splendor, dignity and honor. Because man is the crown of creation, this applies in a very special way to man. And because Mary is the crown of humanity, we find, as it were, God's plan of creation in her and in her in its purest form: "Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you" (Lk 1:28). It is really the crown of the crown of creation. 2. The wisdom of mankind describes this splendor and dignity of existence with four concepts of reality: existence from God's hand is always a unity, it is therefore one, it is good, it is true, and it is beautiful. These are also our very personal stamps, which distinguish us before God and the world. Since we have lost sight of these stamps to a large extent, we hardly take note of them and are determined by inferiority complexes with all negative consequences resulting from it. "Know thyself," it says in this context: "Know Mary, because she is full of grace, so that you may know yourself and your vocation!" 3. Existence is a unity. – Man is one because he is one person. But through sin he is divided and fallen apart: He often experiences himself only as a bundle of drives, as disjointed, as atomized. He is divided in his personality. This is what psychologists diagnose with the word "schizophrenia". The apostle Paul describes the same thing by saying in his letter to the Romans: "I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want. I unhappy man" (Rom 7:19.24). The so-called Enlightenment in 19. The eighteenth century meant that if a person knows what is good, he will do what is good. That is why it was defined: "Knowledge is power". But this was and is a basic error, as Paul says: "I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want."Man cannot be healed or cured by enlightenment alone. Stalin and Hitler were not monsters, they were human beings. But by their deeds they have led the naive belief in the Enlightenment ad absurdum. And the beech tree under which Goethe defined German humanism on the Eltersberg in Weimar: "Let man be noble, helpful and good", then stood on the roll call square of the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, where human dignity was trampled upon. Franz Grillparzer was already right when he wrote: "Humanity without divinity results in bestiality", that is: "Humanity without divinity perverts to inhumanity". The prophet admonishes the people of God by saying: "How long do you continue to waver on two sides??" (1 Kings 18:21). Mary is the great counter-image of God. She is without sin and therefore completely with herself. She is not outside herself, but completely within herself. And she is not driven by passions, but rests wholly in God and thus wholly in herself. That is why she stands by her mission, she stands under the cross in such a way that God can rely on her completely. She stands by her "yes" word from Nazareth to Golgotha. It is characterized by steadfastness and survives all catastrophes of life. Mary is reliable. God can rely on her completely, and therefore we humans can rely on her as well. We know where we stand with Mary: She stands by us and speaks for us and stands by us, as shown, for example, by the protective mantle image of the Mother of Christ: "Your mantle is very wide and broad; it covers all of Christendom". He is not pierced and not frayed. Mary wants to see us grow into true human beings who are at one with God, with man and with themselves, both inwardly and outwardly. 4. The second way of being, which is given and imprinted on us humans by God, we call being good or goodness. For God is the supreme good, and therefore his work, man and the world, cannot be unkind. Mary is the good person par excellence: the good mother of her son, the good helpmate of her bridegroom, the good woman on the road of the world. It is said of Jesus: "He has done all things well" (Mk 7,37). He saw nothing bad and heard nothing bad in the house of Mary in Nazareth. So we may also say of Mary, wherever we meet her: She did everything well – in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, in Cana, in Egypt, in Jerusalem. Mary is not capable of evil. It cannot inspire to the unpleasant. One always leaves her better than one arrived at her. The places of pilgrimage with their many votive offerings are proof of this: "Mary has helped" is usually written on them. Her good heart radiates in her goodness to all who come near her. Mother Teresa of Calcutta always lived and acted and spoke with the rosary in her hand, that is, near to Mary. Therefore so much blessing went out from him. Some children tell their parents they are always especially good to them when they come home from a Marian pilgrimage. Not only because they then brought them a small gift, but they feel something of Mary's goodness and human kindness, which simply rub off on people around them. 5. Being in the world is true because God is truth in person. But man often makes his own existence untrue when he loses the memory of creation. If, for example, he means that man and woman are not related to each other, so that in marriage they become a family. But all so-called alternative models of human sexual coexistence are untrue and therefore corruptive to the human being in essence. Mankind is destroying itself here. Mary, on the other hand, is true as clear spring water. With her there are no lazy compromises: her "yes" is a "yes" – "Be it done to me as you have said" (Lk 1:38). And her "no" is a "no" – This is what the Church says and does in following her. But for this it receives opposition from the world, but not from God. It has become customary in Christianity to have a say in the great ies of world history, but there is hardly a voice stirring that stands protectively before the unborn children and rejects abortion with all its consequences, that says loudly to us strongly: "Embryos are unborn children. And therefore they must not be consumed as spare parts for sick human bodies". And the voice of the Church says: "Euthanasia is an assault on the holiness of God, because all human life comes from the hand of God". And she says: "Marriage and family are not only social-sociological values, but they are divine realities and therefore worthy of protection and defense". Here Mary stands as a mother who knows what an unborn child is. And she suffers with the mothers, because with every abortion also a part of the maternal soul dies. Mary resists the great temptation to take Jesus down from the cross because she knows about the will of the Father in heaven. Mary spreads a clean and truthful atmosphere around her. The disciples gather around her in the Upper Room of Jerusalem before Pentecost. With her one knows where one stands. She always refers to her son: "What he tells you to do, do it!" (Jn 2:5). But Satan is the father of lies, Mary is the mother of truthfulness, who crushes Satan's head. Mary does not deceive, she orients, she never wants anything for herself, but always for her own. She is therefore the mother of good counsel, because she is not moved by self-interest, but by the truth, that is, by God, who wants and does what is best for us humans. Today the truth service of Mary is indispensable to us. Truth is bent, hurt or wounded, even sometimes in the Church, for the sake of so-called "higher values" in many areas of human life. "The truth will set you free" (Jn 8:32), says Christ. It has an irresistible power of persuasion. Let us not be afraid of the truth! In Mary she has taken on the kindly face of the mother. "They have no more wine" (Jn 2:3), she says to her son. She perceives also today the situation of man and says: "They have no more truth". And she knows where true remedy is, going to Jesus who said: "The truth will set you free". 6. The reality of the world is beautiful because it still bears the glimmer of God's hands of creation. Perhaps this realization is the most difficult for us to accept today. God made the cosmos out of the chaos, that is, out of the hullabaloo the orderly beauty. It is not by chance that the most beautiful human images in the world are Mary's images. Let us think of the Sistine Madonna in Dresden or the famous Pietà by Michelangelo in Rome or the Lochner Madonna in Cologne Cathedral. We sing in the song of Mary: "The most beautiful of all". The beauty of Mary has something to do with her sinlessness. Sin always makes you old and ugly. One abortion, for example, is said to make a woman older than half a dozen births. Human beauty means letting the beauty of God shine through our being. This has happened in Mary by the grace of God without competition. It wins every beauty contest. Thus she whets our appetite for her beauty, which is to achieve the greatest possible conformity of our will with the will of God. I often think, when a Miss America or Miss Europe is presented on television, whether God would also give this prize to these concrete persons, or would he not give it much more to a mother in the midst of a large family or to a chronically ill person on her sickbed? For beauty is not only a question of figure, athleticism and appearance, but beauty is the reflection of human dignity. Where man becomes permeable to the reality of God and thus always to the beauty of God, as in Mary, there man also shines in the harmony of creation, in the inner order of the Creator, which we call beauty. In Mary, God's beauty penetrates and radiates from her face, from her eyes, from her speech and actions. "Agere sequitur esse," say the philosophers – "action flows from being". Because Mary is beautifully in the image of God, she gives and awakens beauty where she is and where she lives. The reality of the world and of man is stigmatized, as it were, by the real par excellence, that is, by God. He is the One, the Good, the True and the Beautiful. If man wants to come to himself to be happy with that, he goes to Mary. Here he finds translated into being human, as it were in pure culture, what we are all destined and called to do: To become images of the living God by being one in ourselves, becoming good, true and beautiful: a little like Mary, but certainly with Mary. Amen. + Joachim Cardinal Meisner Archbishop of Cologne

At the same time, in view of the sharp disputes between bishops and the Greens, she opposed an "official bonus" for church representatives who take a stand in political debates. Every cardinal or bishop, however, has the right to a proper discussion.The parliamentary group leader expressed the hope for further talks with representatives of the Catholic Church, as there have been so far. She could also imagine inviting Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne to a "proper and quite clear discussion". But then the parliamentary manager Volker Beck would also take part in it. Beck had called the cardinal a "preacher of hate" after a sermon on the decline of morals in Europe, but retracted the statement two days later after criticism, including from within the Green Party.It was the second sharp statement of the Greens against a church representative within a few days, after party leader Claudia Roth had called the Augsburg Bishop Walter Mixa a "crazed buffoon". Kunast referred to the sharpness of the criticism to statements of the two bishops. The church must ask itself how it can happen that "Catholic Christians talk about women as birthing machines" or that people with certain sexual orientations are described as the downfall of humanity. This kind of conservatism can not be "suddenly the core of the Catholic lived values". There must be no discrimination. She is surprised that silence reigns in church ranks, if one of the outstanding church representatives expresses itself pejoratively.In Kunast's opinion, the church should "seek the core of values" in questions of family and society. Finally it belonged to the central Christian values to live charity and care for the others, in which form ever. The church should not ignore realities such as single parents or patchwork families and discriminate against certain people, he said.

T-shirts with the imprints of Ernesto Che Guevara © Klaus Honigschnabel (epd)

Interviewer: The last image of his body inevitably evokes associations with the crucified Jesus. Until today it is said again and again that Ernesto Che Guevara gave his life out of love for the people. The singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann sang about him as "Jesus Christ with a gun". What is the background of these constant comparisons with Jesus??

Archbishop Schick: Admonition to reconciliation

The events in America are frightening and disturbing, the Catholic theologian wrote on Twitter on Thursday. "Trump, sadly, but only fuels the fire of discord and strife that burns among Americans."Schick also recalled in his tweet a quote from U.S. civil rights leader and Baptist minister Martin Luther King (1929-1968): 'There is no greater power than love. It overcomes hatred like light overcomes darkness."