A former monk and prior at one of Germany’s most famous monasteries, Anselm Bilgri, married his long-time male partner in a church ceremony on Saturday, in a sign of growing pressure on the Catholic Church in Germany to modernise.
Bilgri, 68, who was ordained in 1980 by Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict, already left the Roman Catholic Church in 2020 over his exasperation with the institution that was failing in his view to keep up with the times. Instead, he joined the Old Catholic Church, which emerged in the Netherlands in the 19th century and lets priests marry and allows same-sex relationships.
Last year he married his partner Markus Achter in a civil service. On Saturday, they were married in a church.
“I immediately thought: now I have actually received all seven sacraments, from ordination to marriage,” said Bilgri. “And I would like it to become normal.”
Bilgri was perhaps never your typical monk. He was not only prior, or deputy head, of the 900-year-old Andechs Abbey on Bavaria Holy Mountain, but also the brewery master – in 1999 co-authoring the book “Cooking and Healing with Beer”.
The Vatican’s decision last year to not allow priests to bless same-sex unions dismayed many believers like him who had hoped Pope Francis would soften the hard line taken on sexual morality by John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI – and not just in Germany.
Flemish Roman Catholic bishops last month issued a document effectively allowing the blessing of same-sex unions in direct defiance of that ruling.
“Take this ring and wear it as a sign of love and faithfulness,” Bilgri said as he slid a gold ring onto the small finger of the right hand of his partner Markus Achter at the altar of a church in Munich. The pair wore matching black morning coats with white roses on their lapels.
“I always think that if it becomes more and more self-evident, then at some point it will no longer be something special,” said Achter. “That’s the direction we want to go in, and maybe we have set a sign for that today.”
