Afro-German priest resigns after racist death threats

An Afro-German parish priest has resigned from his parish in Munich after receiving five racist death threats and being stalked, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

To the dismay of parishioners, Fr Olivier Ndjimbi-Tshiende, parish priest of Zorneding on the outskirts of Munich, announced on Sunday 6 March that he would be resigning after Easter.

While the Munich archdiocese deplored that he was resigning, it declared that it was standing by Fr Ndjimbi-Tshiende and could understand his decision.

The 66-year-old priest from DRC, who studied in Germany in the early 1990s, has a doctorate in philosophy from Munich University and is a German citizen. He was exposed to racist abuse from local members of the Christian Social Union, which is a member of Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition. Two CSU members who spoke particularly hatefully about the priest using racist language to the local press have since been forced to resign.

The death threats against Fr Ndjimbi-Tshiende were a “catastrophe” Archbishop Heiner Koch of Berlin told Deutschlandradio and called for a “clear reaction” on the part of the German Church.