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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.{{citation needed|date=April 2013}}
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.{{citation needed|date=April 2013}}
===Reconciliation with Jews===
===Reconciliation with Jews===
He was critical{{when|date=April 2013}} of the [[Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith]] document ''[[Dominus Iesus]]'' (2000), which he believed was an offense to the Jewish people. He was often criticised by conservatives for his role in [[ecumenism]].
He was critical{{when|date=April 2013}} of the [[Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith]] document ''[[Dominus Iesus]]'' (2000), which he believed was an offense to the Jewish people.


In 2003, he wrote a text called ''Anti-semitism: A wound to be healed'' for the European Day of Jewish Culture.<ref>[http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/relations-jews-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20030908_kasper-antisemitismo_en.html Anti-semitism: A wound to be healed]</ref> On 10 July 2004, at the Latin-American Rabbinical Seminary of Buenos Aires, [[the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation]] and the Angelo Roncalli Committee presented Kasper the "Memorial Mural Award" for his lifetime dedication to the causes of understanding and reconciliation between Jews and Catholics.<ref>[http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/news/cardinal-walter-kasper.1590.htm Cardinal Walter Kasper distinguished by the Wallenberg Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee]</ref>
In 2003, he wrote a text called ''Anti-semitism: A wound to be healed'' for the European Day of Jewish Culture.<ref>[http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/relations-jews-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20030908_kasper-antisemitismo_en.html Anti-semitism: A wound to be healed]</ref> On 10 July 2004, at the Latin-American Rabbinical Seminary of Buenos Aires, [[the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation]] and the Angelo Roncalli Committee presented Kasper the "Memorial Mural Award" for his lifetime dedication to the causes of understanding and reconciliation between Jews and Catholics.<ref>[http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/news/cardinal-walter-kasper.1590.htm Cardinal Walter Kasper distinguished by the Wallenberg Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee]</ref>

===International Theological Commission===
===International Theological Commission===
{{infobox cardinal styles
{{infobox cardinal styles

Revision as of 19:17, 17 September 2014

His Eminence

Walter Kasper
President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity
Cardinal Kasper (left) with Cardinal Danneels
SeeRottenburg-Stuttgart (Emeritus)
Appointed3 March 2001
Installed21 April 2005
Term ended1 July 2010
PredecessorEdward Idris Cassidy
SuccessorKurt Koch
Other post(s)Cardinal-Priest of Ognissanti in Via Appia Nuova
Orders
Ordination6 April 1957
by Carl Joseph Leiprecht
Consecration17 June 1989
by Oskar Saier
Created cardinal21 February 2001
RankCardinal-Priest
Personal details
Born
Walter Kasper

(1933-03-05) 5 March 1933 (age 91)
Heidenheim an der Brenz, Germany
NationalityGerman
DenominationRoman Catholic
Previous post(s)
  • 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)
Mottoveritatem in caritate
Coat of armsWalter Kasper's coat of arms

Walter Kasper (born 5 March 1933) 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 speaks 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 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 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 which urged allowing divorced and civilly remarried German Catholics to return to the sacraments, to the disapproval of then Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II.[1] In 1994, he was named co-chair of the International Commission for Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue.

Cardinal

He was elevated to the cardinalate by Pope John Paul II in the consistory of 21 February 2001, as Cardinal-Deacon of Ognissanti in Via Appia Nuova.

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.

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

Kasper was the oldest cardinal eligible to vote in the Papal conclave of 2013. His 80th birthday was on 5 March 2013, a few days after the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. His eligibility to serve as an elector ended when that conclave concluded.

Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

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.

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.[citation needed]

Reconciliation with Jews

He was critical[when?] of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith document Dominus Iesus (2000), which he believed was an offense to the Jewish people.

In 2003, he wrote a text called Anti-semitism: A wound to be healed for the European Day of Jewish Culture.[2] On 10 July 2004, at the Latin-American Rabbinical Seminary of Buenos Aires, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee presented Kasper the "Memorial Mural Award" for his lifetime dedication to the causes of understanding and reconciliation between Jews and Catholics.[3]

International Theological Commission

Styles of
Walter Kasper
Reference styleHis Eminence
Spoken styleYour Eminence
Informal styleCardinal
SeeRottenburg-Stuttgart (Emeritus)

Kasper is a member of the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. He has repeatedly led official delegations of the Vatican on the annual visit to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople. In August 2007, he led the Roman Catholic delegation to 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. He 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 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.[4]

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.[5] Kasper was distancing himself from the scandal that ensued when it transpired that one of the bishops, Richard Williamson, was found to have claimed that reports about the Holocaust were exaggerated and that no Jews died in Nazi gas chambers. 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. He said that: "Up to now people in the Vatican have spoken too little with each other and have not checked where problems might arise". He said that in lifting the excommunications "there were misunderstandings and management errors in the Curia."[6]

Comments on Britain

In September 2010, Cardinal Kasper withdrew from 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".[7] In an interview with a German magazine, he was quoted as saying: "When you land at Heathrow you think at times you have landed in a Third World country". Kasper's secretary explained it as "a description of the many different people that live in Britain at the moment".[8] He said that when one wears a cross on the British Airways "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".[7]

A spokesman for the Church in Britain said that Kasper's remarks were not the views of the Vatican or of the Church.[7] The cardinal's secretary said that Kasper had decided not to travel because gout made it difficult for him to walk.[8] He also explained the cardinal used "aggressive atheism" to describe people like Richard Dawkins, a prominent atheist, who have been very critical of the Pope and talked about making a "citizens arrest" of the Pope while in Britain.[8]

Pope Francis' comments

Pope Francis, on 17 March 2013, four days after his election as Pope, called Kasper "a clever theologian, a good theologian" in the course of a sermon in which he reported that Kasper's book on mercy "did me a lot of good".[1][9]

References

  1. ^ a b Coday, Dennis (17 March 2013). "Francis preaches mercy, forgiveness on first papal Sunday". National Catholic Reporter. Retrieved 1 April 2013.
  2. ^ Anti-semitism: A wound to be healed
  3. ^ Cardinal Walter Kasper distinguished by the Wallenberg Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee
  4. ^ Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, translated by V. Green, Kent — New Jersey 1976, p.16
  5. ^ Healing schism, pope risks creating another
  6. ^ Glatz, Carol (3 February 2009). "Vatican official laments lack of communication that fueled controversy". Catholic News Service. Retrieved 1 April 2013.
  7. ^ a b c BBC News: Pope aide pulls out of trip after Third World jibe
  8. ^ a b c Palmer, Richard (16 September 2010). "Pope's aide calls 'atheist' Britain Third World land". Daily Express. Retrieved 1 April 2013.
  9. ^ Pope Francis (17 March 2013). "Angelus". The Holy See. Retrieved 1 April 2013.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Walter Kasper.
Catholic Church titles
Preceded by Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart
1989–1999 		Succeeded by
Preceded by President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity
3 March 2001–1 July 2010 		Succeeded by

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