Church for Muslims -- Parish Hall for Holy Mass

Bremen-Wotlmerschausen: Catholic Parish Church
Transformed as Refugee Center for Muslims

(Berlin) The Church as a multifunctional hall. Some churches serve as exhibition halls, others as dining rooms for Christmas dinner, feeding the poor or charity galas, and still others as a cultural centers for lectures and discussions, and more recently some are used even for refugee accommodations. This is also the case in Bremen-Woltmershausen. The Catholic Church of St. Benedict was rebuilt at public expense into a refugee camp for Muslims.

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From the 330 square meter church  "small residential units with around 20 square meters" were built, reported the Weser Kurier .

In the former Catholic church some 40 Muslim refugees are to be moved. The Bremen Senator for Social Affairs, Anja Stahmann inspected the renovated and repurposed church  today with some Muslim refugees and considered the effort to be extremely successful. A Catholic church which has been  rebuilt for Muslims,  it is at last  a sensible use. Green Party politician said, "which is lived charity". Surely, you must know, yes.

For now, the Catholic parish has  made the church available for a year. "Worship should be celebrated in this period in the parish hall," said the Weser Kurier. Why   the Muslims themselves shouldn't   move into the community hall so that the liturgy, the nature of the parish community, can be celebrated in the purpose-built church, was not a quetion asked by the newspaper.

Church made available for a year as a refugee accommodation 

"Sacred objects like the altar and the wall Cross remain in the Church", because, according to the newspaper, after one year the church is expected to "be used again for worship". Whether the church was profaned liturgically, Pastor Johannes Sczyrba would not say. He and his parish are rather proud to be the first Catholic community, "which has made their church available, only for a certain time as a refugee accommodation." 

The church was built after the Second World War, as 15 million Germans were brutally driven from East Germany and linguistic enclaves in eastern Europe, which increased the number of Catholics in Bremen. The church was built in 1966 and established as a parish in 1993. Today St. Benedict's is only a

The church was built in 1966 and built in 1993 as a parish. Today St. Benedict is only a filial church  of a larger regional parish.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Wikicommons

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

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