Tales from Germany

The Pope, or I should rather say the German Pope, caused the Germans a lot of headaches this week. The week started off with the influential political and cultural magazine Der Spiegel putting the Pope on their cover, saying a German Pope embarrasses the Catholic Church. They went further to dissect him and his views in detail. The problems the Germans have with this conservative Pope, is that denying the Holocaust is a serious punishable offense in this country. It seemed that years in the Vatican had made the Pope forget this fact. Why else would he have pardoned a Holocaust denier? In fact he was called the Panzer Cardinal by his detractors here in Germany long before he became Pope, because of the way he bulldozed through his conservative theology. By Tuesday last week, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel entered the fray more or less telling the Pope to sort out the mess. She got a lot of flak for that, but she had to save Germany’s reputation. This Pope was d...