Pope Urges German Bishops to Action

Pope John Paul II has called on Germany’s Roman Catholic bishops to speak out for the church and its values in an increasingly godless society.

“A lay society in which there is ever more silence about God needs your voice,” the pope told a group of German bishops making the visit to the Vatican required of all Catholic prelates every five years.

“The Berlin Wall has fallen. Barbed wire has been replaced by the open door. The Brandenburg Gate, for decades symbol of separation, is once again what it was before: the symbol of a unified Germany,” he said.

But, he said, communism has given way to consumerism, another form of godlessness.

“Material goods are highlighted with such insistence as often to suffocate any desire for religious and moral values,” the pope said. “But with the passing of time, if the soul remains without nutriment and only the hands are filled, man experiences the void.”