Over 100,000 volunteers and 5,900 salaried employees with the German Catholic Church helped asylum seekers in the country in 2017. Refugee integration is one of the main issues focused on in the latest report by the German Church on its activities and projects last year.
In 2016, the 27 German (arch)dioceses made 127.7 million euros available for activities related to asylum seekers. These included 53.4 million euros to fund reception initiatives in Germany, including German language, basic education and professional courses. The sum also included 74.3 million euros for development cooperation in the home countries of the asylum seekers.
The amount of aid is a considerable rise compared to 2015, when the church's expenditure on refugees totalled 112 million euros. The German Church has also made 1,380 ecclesiastical buildings available for refugees
'Those who have seen floating corpses cannot go back'
"Those who, like me, have seen the corpses of innocent people floating on the sea and have had to zip up a body bag of a six-year-old child," said Regamy Thillainathan, from the Cologne archdiocese, ''can no longer say that the issue of migrants and refugees is one of individual countries. Our faith cannot be satisfied with burying the dead."
In the report, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, head of the German Episcopal Conference, thanked the many volunteers that worked with the Church in the country. "We must live our faith with conviction. With the numbers and activities of this year, we will continue to build a Church that is at the service of humans, a Church that does not forget what its main mission is," he added.