Praise for carers of souls

At an ecumenical remembrance service for the 11 people who died in a head-on train collision in Bad Aibling in Bavaria on 9 February, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and the leader of the German Protestant Church, Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, especially thanked the priests and pastoral assistants known as Notfallseelsorger, literally “carers of souls in emergency situations”, for their help at the scene of the crash, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

Notfallseelsorge is a Christian pastoral service which, with secular crisis intervention services, provides help for people after a sudden loss.