The removal of a cross before the G7 ministers’ meeting in the Peace Hall in Münster is seen as an affront.

Friedenssaal/ Wikipedia

Newsroom (November 9, 2022, 10:30 AM, Gaudium Press) At the request of the German Foreign Ministry, the medieval cross has been removed from the Peace Hall (Friedenssaal) of the Münster City Hall where the meeting of the chancellors of the seven largest countries in the world, G7, was held.

The President of the Catholic Office of North Rhine-Westphalia, Fr. Antonius Hamers, criticized the removal of the cross, calling this act “a forgetting of history, culture and tradition.” “This hall is the place where a religious peace was negotiated 374 years ago. And if the religious symbol is removed from there, then that shows that obviously what this hall, what this Westphalian peace stands for, has not been understood,” Hamers told the Cologne Catholic Church’s Internet portal, domradio.de. “It is an ‘affront’ to many people.”

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock regretted the decision last Friday to remove a cross belonging to the inventory for such a meeting in the Peace Hall. This was a purely organizational measure, not a political one. She herself only learned about it on the morning of the event. Even though she had converted the historic hall into a conference room, the cross would have to remain there.

The Diocese of Münster, too, called the measure “incomprehensible” and a lack of tolerance, and that it would ask the Foreign Ministry for an official justification for this measure. “The cross represents – even if it has not always been observed – tolerance, peace and humanity. The cross represents the overcoming of violence and death. The cross, therefore, represents exactly the goals that the foreign ministers are pursuing when they met in Münster.”

Protocol is to blame

A Foreign Ministry spokesman justified the measure on the basis of protocol: people of different religions were attending the meeting. In any case, it is a “wrong understanding of neutrality when it is said: we remove all religious symbols from the public.””

Thomas Söding, a New Testament scholar, also criticized the removal of the cross, which reveals a lack of political, religious, and cultural competence of the Foreign Ministry. He emphasized, “If you take the cross out of the Peace Hall, this place, which was obviously chosen because it is highly symbolic, is destroyed. It is just a backdrop.”

If it is part of the Foreign Ministry’s protocol to make Christian or religious symbols “invisible” in public spaces, it would be “a fatal development.” The relationship between religion and politics is becoming more difficult around the world. “In this situation, the Foreign Ministry cannot act like this, as if political freedom can be won by denying religion,” Söding said.

With information katholisch.de.

Compiled by Zephania Gangl