The pope's ambassador to Germany told the country's bishops this week that the Church's visible unity rests on two pillars: the papacy and the Eucharist.
Without them, he warned, the Church would become "a mere federation of individual communities, or even a Christian-flavored NGO [nongovernmental organization]," CNA Deutsch, the German-language sister service of EWTN News, reported.
Archbishop Hubertus van Megen, the apostolic nuncio, spoke at the opening of the German bishops' conference fall plenary assembly in Fulda, which runs through Oct. 1.
The bishops' conference published the full address.
"The Catholic Church rests on two great pillars of its visible unity — the Petrine ministry and the Eucharist," van Megen told the German bishops on Sept. 28. "The pope safeguards the unity of faith and ecclesial communion, while the Eucharist sacramentally realizes and nourishes this unity."
The Eucharist "is not merely a symbol of unity," van Megen said, but "actually creates and strengthens the communion of the Church." The pope's ministry, he added, "is not an end in itself." Its task is "to protect and foster that communion which finds its highest expression in the celebration of the Eucharist."
The Dutch prelate cautioned that the two do not guarantee unity "in a purely organizational or mechanical sense." Still, he said Christ "has given his Church enduring means through which its unity can be preserved and continually renewed."
Speaking "as a representative of the Holy See," the nuncio called Rome "the visible center and the guarantor of the unity of the universal Church, to which the Church in Germany also belongs." He noted that the Church in Africa differs from the Church in Europe and that "no local Church is more or less a Church than another."
Van Megen said synodality "can never be the concern of individual groups alone, while others are left behind." He closed by telling the bishops that "where we remain in communion with him, where we listen to one another, where we preserve unity with the universal Church and the successor of Peter — there the Holy Spirit can open up new paths."
The gathering in Fulda, in the central German state of Hesse, is also taking up life-protection questions and discussing artificial intelligence.
At a Sept. 29 press conference, Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen said the Church "clearly" rejects legalizing surrogacy, arguing that it makes the child "the object of a contract among adults," CNA Deutsch reported.
Auxiliary Bishop Anton Losinger of Augsburg warned that gene editing and prenatal genetic testing raise questions about the dignity of people with disabilities.
A question of 'power'
Five days earlier, in an interview with katholisch.de, a portal run on behalf of the German bishops' conference, van Megen said his "impression is that Germans often want too much, too quickly." He called the word "power," common in documents of the controversial Synodal Way, "almost dangerous," and said he hoped to travel to Rome at the end of October.
The Vatican has been reviewing the bylaws of the Synodal Conference, a planned permanent body meant to implement the Synodal Way, since late March.
The Roman Curia and the German bishops have held talks on its statute since 2025.
