Germany's Catholic bishops met at a monastery yesterday to ponder their reaction to Pope John Paul II's call for Catholics to stop working at abortion counselling centres, but made to comment afterwards.
The Bishops' Conference is expected to reveal its position and the contents of the letter from the Pope today when its chairman, Bishop Karl Lehmann, issues an apostolic letter.
Activist priests, lay Catholic groups and leaders from across the political spectrum have called on the bishops to reject the Pope's call. Pro-choice and anti-abortion activists demonstrated yesterday at Himmelspforten ("Heaven's Gate"), the Bavarian monastery near Wurzburg where the bishops met.
A group of militant Greens from Bavaria rallied outside the monastery to call for the church to stay in the centres and not abandon the women who go to them. Anti-abortion advocates urged the church to abandon the counselling centres. They carried signs that said: "We say no to certifying [abortion]."
In all, 27 bishops took part in the meeting. The one notable absence was Bishop Johannes Dyba. Since 1993, his Diocese of Fulda in central Germany has refused to allow the centres to issue certificates clearing the way to abortions.
Abortion is illegal in Germany, but in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy it can be carried out if a woman has a letter showing that she has visited a counselling centre. The church is responsible for 260 centres, out of more than 1,600 throughout Germany. According to the Catholic welfare agency Caritas, 20,117 women sought advice on abortion from the centres in 1996, and 23 per cent ended up deciding not to have an abortion.
The German Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, yesterday called on the church to carefully consider its position and to remain in the centres and "not leave women alone in their [time of] spiritual distress."
He said that the presence of Catholics in the centres was the only way "to guarantee that the moral and ethical views of the Catholic Church are taken into account in the decisions of pregnant women".
Pope John Paul sent an apostolic letter last week to German bishops, asking them to change what had been their generally favorable attitude towards letting Catholics work in the centres.
The contents of the letter have not been publicly revealed, but its thrust was reported by newspapers citing senior church officials.
The magazine Publik Forum, close to Catholic circles, said yesterday it had a copy of the letter, in which the Pope had ordered bishops to withdraw Catholics from the centres so that they will no longer issue certificates. The daily Der Spiegel said the Pope's letter was not as strong as some believed, making no threats against those who disobey his call.
The abortion debate comes at a sensitive time for the government as the Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, is running for re-election in September. The Family Minister, Ms Claudia Nolte, thinks current legislation - a compromise reached in 1995 between the liberal former East German laws and more restrictive former West German statutes - is too liberal and wants to cut down on the number of abortions. The number of abortions officially registered jumped 33 per cent from 1995 to 1996, to 130,899.