During his visit, he will have meetings with Germany’s state and political leadership, politicians and representatives of the churches.
The Ecumenical Patriarch will start off his official visit in Stuttgart, where he will be received by Baden-Wurrtemberg Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann on Saturday. On Sunday, he will lead a mass at the Greek-Orthodox “Annunciation of the Virgin” Church in Esslingen, after which he is due in Frankfurt for meetings with the president of the Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau and of the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate, as well as a visit to Frankfurt’s St. Bartholomew Cathedral.
He will then travel to Bonne, where he is due to meet the German Synod of Catholic bishops on Tuesday, before heading to Berlin on Wednesday and Thursday, for meetings with German President Joachim Gauck, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Green Party co-chair Cem Ozdemir and the Turkish ambassador to Berlin.
The next stop on the Patriarch’s itinerary is Munich, where he will meet Bavaria’s Prime Minister Horst Seehofer, be named honorary lecturer at Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University and speak at a symposium organised by the city’s Roman Catholic Archdiocese on “Ways of sustainable living and preserving creation”.
He will wrap up the visit on May 19 by going to the former Nazi concentration camps in Dahau and visiting the Jewish monument, Catholic chapel, Evangelical Church and the Orthodox Church of the Resurrection.
