German bishops join mourning after Christmas market attack

“In these days and before a feast where the message of God’s love, human dignity, and the longing for a healed world particularly move us, such an act is all the more frightening and abysmal.”

The president of the German Bishops’ Conference and the Bishop of Magdeburg expressed their shock and offered prayers after a car attack at a Christmas market in eastern Germany on Friday left five people dead and more than 200 injured.

Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, the conference president, said the “attack in Magdeburg leaves us speechless. The horror, grief, and sympathy are felt today by many people throughout Germany and worldwide.”

He continued: “Our thoughts and prayers are in Magdeburg during these hours. As churches, we mourn with the relatives of the victims of this terrible attack and pray for the injured and the deceased, as well as for their relatives who now fear for their loved ones.”

Bishop Gerhard Feige of Magdeburg issued a statement immediately after the attack on Friday evening. “I think of those affected, their relatives, and the emergency services and include them in my prayers,” he said.

“Especially in these days and before a feast where the message of God’s love, human dignity, and the longing for a healed world particularly move us, such an act is all the more frightening and abysmal.”

Feige also said the attack presented “a challenge for our society to counter any extremism even more decisively and to work even more for peaceful coexistence”.

In his statement, issued jointly with the Lutheran organisation EKD, Bätzing expressed gratitude to the “committed emergency services who have been caring for the injured since yesterday and are working under high pressure to clarify what happened, as well as to the emergency chaplains who are standing by the people in this moment and accompanying the traumatised”

The attack took place shortly after 7pm on Friday, when a black rental car drove into crowds at a Christmas market in the heart of Magdeburg, a city of 240,000 people west of Berlin.

The suspect, a 50-year-old man identified as Taleb A, came to Germany from Saudi Arabia in 2006 and had at one time worked as a psychotherapist, according to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. He had been granted indefinite leave to remain in Germany after applying for asylum, citing threats in his home country.

In a 2019 interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau, the suspect had described himself as an “ex-Muslim”.

German reports on Saturday said the man had acted increasingly erratically on social media in recent months, threatening bloodshed and “war” on German authorities.

The Diocese of Magdeburg opened St Sebastian’s Cathedral for prayer and reflection on Saturday, while Magdeburg Cathedral held a memorial service for the victims that evening.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser visited the city earlier in the day to meet local officials and pay their respects at the site of the attack.

Pope Francis also expressed his shock at the attack in a telegram sent to President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The message, sent on the Pope’s behalf by the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, conveyed his “spiritual closeness” to all those affected by the tragedy.

The Pope “prays for the deceased and entrusts the people to Christ, our hope, whose light may shine in the darkness”, the message said, expressing gratitude to emergency responders helping victims in “this difficult moment”.

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