German dioceses promote blessing ceremonies for ‘loving couples’
A couple hold a blessing card after a ceremony in the Diocese of Magdeburg in 2022, before the publication of Fiducia Supplicans
Ronny Hartmann / DPA / Alamy
The document Fiducia Supplicans introduced the possibility of blessing couples without officially validating their status or changing Church teaching on marriage.
The president of the German bishops’ conference Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg commended the implementation of blessings for couples in his diocese unable to receive the sacrament of marriage.
“I encourage pastoral workers to make use of the opportunities this handout provides for organising blessing ceremonies for couples,” he wrote in the diocese’s official gazette last week of a document published earlier this year.
“Blessings Give Strength to Love” was published on 4 April 2025 on the recommendation of the Synodal Assembly of the Synodal Path, the reform initiative of the German bishops’ conference and the Central Committee of German Lay Catholics, to offer a service of blessing to couples who do not wish to enter into a church sacramental marriage or to whom it is not available.
It followed Pope Francis’ document Fiducia Supplicans, published in December 2023, which referred to “the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage”.
According to the Synodal Path decision, blessings can be celebrated by clergy and also by lay people holding a bishop’s lice
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