Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Bishop of Mainz and President of the German bishops' conference, has cautioned against morally condemning the German Nobel Prize Laureate Günther Grass.  The novelist this month confessed that he had once been a member of Hitler's elite Waffen SS.

In an article for the Mainz church paper, Cardinal Lehmann said that while an autobiography was naturally the best place for a confession of this sort, it was deplorable that Grass had let "so many good opportunities" to admit his brief membership of the SS at the end of the Second World War go by, and had taken over 60 years to come to terms with his own past. 

It was, moreover, "most regrettable" that  over the years Grass had frequently attacked leading German politicians like Konrad Adenauer and Franz Josef Strauss for the role they played during the war years. "A Christian, however, will still treat such a late confession fairly," Cardinal Lehmann said and quoted the Gospel of St John, 8:7 - "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone". This was neither the time for "denazification certificates" nor for repeating homages, but also not for "gloating over another's misfortune". A confession of this kind was never too late and there was time yet for "an appropriate/commensurate word of apology", Cardinal Lehmann emphasised.

Archbishop Werner Thyssen of Hamburg said he was "shattered" to see how difficult it had been for Grass to admit his SS membership but added that it was "never too late".