Church relaxes rules on gay or remarried lay employees

The German Church, in a legal decision suggesting wider pastoral reforms, has revised its labour laws so that its lay Catholic employees will no longer automatically lose their jobs if they divorce and remarry or enter into a same-sex union.

The bishops voted by more than a two-thirds majority to adjust internal rules for lay employees “to the multiple changes in legal practice, legislation and society”.

The Catholic and Protestant Churches together make up Germany’s second-largest employer after the state, with about 1.3 million staff in schools, hospitals and social services. Caritas alone has more than 500,000 employees.

Recent controversies such as the dismissals of a remarried hospital doctor and of a lesbian teacher in a same-sex union have provoked criticism of the separate labour laws that allow Churches to ignore national anti-discrimination laws.