Walter Kasper

Walter Kasper
President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity
Cardinal Kasper (left) with Cardinal Danneels
See	Rottenburg-Stuttgart (Emeritus)
Appointed	3 March 2001
Enthroned	21 April 2005
Reign ended	1 July 2010
Predecessor	Edward Idris Cassidy
Successor	Kurt Koch
Other posts	Cardinal-Priest of Ognissanti in Via Appia Nuova
Orders
Ordination	6 April 1957 by Carl Joseph Leiprecht
Consecration	17 June 1989 by Oskar Saier
Created Cardinal	21 February 2001
Rank	Cardinal-Priest
Personal details
Birth name	Walter Kasper
Born	5 March 1933 (1933-03-05) Heidenheim an der Brenz, Germany
Nationality	German
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Previous post	Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart (1989 - 1999) Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (1999 - 2001) Cardinal-Deacon of Ognissanti in Via Appia Nuova (2001 - 2011)
Coat of arms

Walter Kasper (born 5 March 1933 in Heidenheim an der Brenz) is a German cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He is President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, having served as its President from 2001 to 2010. Kasper can speak German, English and Italian.

Early life

Born in Heidenheim an der Brenz, Germany, Kasper was ordained a priest on 6 April 1957 by Bishop Carl Leiprecht of Rottenburg. From 1957 to 1958 he was a parochial vicar in a Stuttgart. He returned to his studies and earned a doctorate in dogmatic theology from the University of Tübingen. He was a faculty member at Tübingen from 1958 to 1961 and worked for three years as an assistant to the conservative Leo Scheffczyk and the liberal Hans Küng, who was banned from teaching by Vatican authorities owing to his critical views on contraception and papal infallibility. He later taught dogmatic theology at the Westphalian University of Münster (1964–1970), rising to become dean of the theological faculty in 1969 and then the same in Tübingen in 1970. In 1983, Kasper taught as a visiting professor at The Catholic University of America. He was editor of the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche.

Bishop and cardinal

Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart

Kasper was named Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Germany's fourth largest Catholic diocese, on 17 April 1989. He was consecrated as a bishop on 17 June that same year by Archbishop Oskar Saier of Freiburg im Breisgau; Bishops Karl Lehmann and Franz Kuhnle served as co-consecrators. In 1993 he and other members of the German episcopate signed a pastoral letter allowing divorced and civilly remarried German Catholics to return to the sacraments, to the disapproval of then Cardinal Ratzinger. In 1994, he was named co-chair of the International Commission for Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue.

Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

Styles of Walter Kasper
Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	Rottenburg-Stuttgart (Emeritus)

On 3 March 1999, Kasper was appointed President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity - and as such, President of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews - and resigned from his post in Rottenburg-Stuttgart. He was elevated to the cardinalate by Pope John Paul II in the consistory of 21 February 2001 (along with Leo Scheffczyk), as Cardinal-Deacon of Ognissanti in Via Appia Nuova. He was critical of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith document Dominus Iesus, issued in 2000, which he believed was an offense to the Jewish people. He was often criticised by conservatives for his role in ecumenism. In February 2011 Cardinal Kasper revealed the that over the course of his career: he was forced to drink vodka while in Moscow for talks with the Russian Orthodox Church. One Orthodox metropolitan, he said, even insisted that he drink vodka for breakfast -- though in that case, Kasper said, the vodka was actually fairly good.

On 21 February 2011, he opted for the order of Cardinal-Priest, with his former diaconal church elevated to the level of cardinalitial title.

Reconciliation with Jews

In 2003, he wrote a text called Anti-semitism: A wound to be healed for the European Day of Jewish Culture. On July 10, 2004, at the Latin-American Rabbinical Seminary of Buenos Aires, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee presented to Cardinal Kasper the "Memorial Mural Award", for his lifetime dedication to the causes of understanding and reconciliation between Jews and Catholics.

International Theological Commission

He is also a member of the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Upon the death of John Paul II on 2 April 2005, Kasper and all major Vatican officials, in accord with custom, automatically lost their positions during the sede vacante. He was a cardinal elector in the 2005 papal conclave. On the following 21 April, Pope Benedict XVI confirmed him as President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. He has repeatedly led official delegations of the Vatican on the annual visit to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, on the occasion of the patronal feast of Saint Andrew. In August 2007, he was the head of the Roman Catholic delegation that participated at the funeral ceremony of Patriarch Teoctist of the Romanian Christian Orthodox Church.

Book on the Eucharist

In 2005, Cardinal Kasper wrote a book entitled Sacrament Of Unity: The Eucharist and the Church, a reflection on the Eucharist partly inspired by John Paul II's encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia. In this book, he strongly insisted on the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, an aspect somewhat overshadowed after the Council.

Book about Jesus Christ

First published in 1976, Cardinal Kasper's book Jesus The Christ treats of the subject of Christology in three manners: A contemporary approach, a historical approach and a factual approach. After these three approaches have been exhausted, the Chrisotlogical themes of resurrection, mystery, and priesthood are treated. Ecclesiology is seen as part of Christology in this book because the Church is oriented towards Christ in his person. And Christ did not only say things, but he also did things.

Society of Saint Pius X

In January 2009, Kasper told The New York Times that he had little, if any, input on whether to lift the excommunication of four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X. This action was especially controversial because of the views of one of the bishops regarding the Holocaust, although his views on this matter had nothing to do with the original excommunication: British-born Bishop Richard Williamson had claimed that reports about the Holocaust were exaggerated and that no Jews died in Nazi gas chambers. [1]

As the Vatican official responsible for relations with the Jewish religion, Kasper felt it necessary to comment on the action and the process leading up to the lifting of the excommunications. Kasper said that: "Up to now people in the Vatican have spoken too little with each other and have not checked where problems might arise". In reference to the lifting of the excommunications, he continued, saying that "there were misunderstandings and management errors in the Curia."

Comments on Britain

In September 2010, Cardinal Kasper pulled out of the papal visit to Britain, after reportedly saying that Heathrow Airport gives the impression of a Third World country and that the United Kingdom is marked by "a new and aggressive atheism". In an interview with German magazine Focus, the cardinal was quoted as saying: "When you land at Heathrow you think at times you have landed in a Third World country," as well as adding criticism of British Airways (BA), a comment not unlike those presented at the Review Centre website, but Kasper's secretary explained it as "a description of the many different people that live in Britain at the moment". With regard to British Airways, he said that, when one wears a cross on the airline "you are discriminated against", a reference to the British Airways cross controversy. British Airways said that Kasper had been "seriously misinformed" in his claims about the airline, and that "It is completely untrue that we discriminate against Christians or members of any faith".

A spokesman for the Church in Britain said that Kasper's remarks were not the views of the Vatican or of the Church. The cardinal's secretary said that Kasper had decided not to travel because of difficulty in walking, because of gout. He also explained the cardinal's reference to "aggressive atheism" in Britain as his way of describing people like Richard Dawkins, (a prominent atheist) who have been very critical of the Pope and who had even talked about making a "citizens arrest" of the Pope while in Britain.

External links

• Vatican profile of Kasper
• Kasper's biography at catholic-pages.com
• Kasper's views on Dominus Iesus
• "Islam is a Different Culture". SPIEGEL ONLINE: Interview with Cardinal Walter Kasper, 18 September 2006.

Catholic Church titles
Preceded by Georg Moser	Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart 1989 – 1999	Succeeded by Gebhard Fürst
Preceded by Edward Idris Cassidy	President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity 3 March 2001 – 1 July 2010	Succeeded by Kurt Koch