a holy marriage ceremony By Reuters

By Louisa Off and Sarah Marsh

MUNICH (Reuters) – Anselm Bilgri, a former monk and prior at one in every of Germany’s most well-known monasteries, needed to depart the Roman Catholic Church to wed his long-term male associate. Now he hopes their marriage ceremony inside a breakaway church will normalise such unions.

Bilgri, 68, and his associate Markus Achter, 41, have been wed in a Munich church on Saturday by a priest of the Previous Catholic Church, which emerged within the Netherlands within the nineteenth century and lets monks marry and permits same-sex relationships.

“I instantly thought: now I’ve really acquired all seven sacraments, from ordination to marriage,” stated Bilgri, chuckling after the ceremony. “And I would love it to grow to be regular.”

Bilgri, who was ordained in 1980 by Joseph Ratzinger, who grew to become Pope Benedict, left the Roman Catholic Church in 2020 resulting from frustrations over its failure to modernise – the Vatican doesn’t permit monks or same-sex {couples} to wed.

His was one in every of many departures from the Catholic Church in Germany amid anger over abuse scandals and a sense amongst some that the establishment is failing to maintain up with the occasions.

That feeling intensified final yr after the Vatican determined to not permit monks to bless same-sex unions. The ruling disenchanted believers who had hoped Pope Francis would soften the onerous line taken on the difficulty by John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI – and never simply in Germany.

Flemish Roman Catholic bishops final month issued a doc successfully permitting the blessing of same-sex unions in defiance of that ruling.

Bilgri ran the brewery at a Munich monastery earlier than turning into prior, or deputy head, of the 900-year-old Andechs Abbey on Bavaria’s “Holy Mountain”, in 1999 co-authoring the ebook “Cooking and Therapeutic with Beer”.

“Take this ring and put on it as an indication of affection and faithfulness,” Bilgri stated as he slid a gold ring onto the little finger of Achter’s proper hand in a small church in Munich, each sporting matching black morning coats with white roses of their lapels.

The couple had already wed in a civil ceremony final yr.

“I all the time assume that if it turns into an increasing number of self-evident, then in some unspecified time in the future it can now not be one thing particular,” stated Achter. “That is the route we wish to go in, and perhaps now we have set an indication for that at present.”