In the summer of 2024, the Catholic Church in Luxembourg faces a critical decision: does it step in to rescue Caritas, or not? After initial efforts to influence crisis management, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich ultimately decides to keep his distance. The Church lets the country’s largest Catholic aid organisation collapse. Why?
Listen to Episode 5 with English subtitles in the video below, or read the full transcript.
Léonardo Kahn Friday, 19 July 2024, 10:44 am. Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich and Auxiliary Bishop Leo Wagener receive an e-mail from Marie-Christine Ries, the Catholic Church’s representative on the Caritas board of directors.
Marie-Christine Ries Caritas has lost €61 million. Including €33 million in lines of credit with two banks.
Léonardo Kahn This is not the first message the Cardinal receives regarding the Caritas fraud. Just three days earlier, when the fraud is uncovered internally, he is informed of what has happened. Jean-Claude Hollerich claims otherwise.
Taina Bofferding I’m quoting the Cardinal here who said...
Jean-Claude Hollerich No-one at Caritas has been in touch with me to tell me what has happened.
Taina Bofferding That reaction is not appropriate.
Théo Péporté For me, Caritas is and will continue to be part of the Church’s work. Without it we don’t actually need the Church.
Léonardo Kahn In the summer of 2024, Caritas is facing an existential crisis. And the Diocese lets the Catholic organisation go under. Why?
My name is Léonardo Kahn and this is Scene Change, the 100.7 documentary podcast. Our second series of Scene Change is called The Caritas Affair. Across eight episodes, we will chart the timeline of a scandal where everything that could have gone wrong, did. An investigation by Pia Oppel and Jean-Claude Franck.
Episode 5: The Diocese.
We’ve reached the halfway point of our journey through the unbelievable story of the Caritas Affair. We’ve seen how the fraud unfolded internally at Caritas. How the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), her management colleagues and the board of directors reacted. Now, we’re slowly turning our attention to the players outside of Caritas. First up, the Diocese. Jean-Claude, Pia, what’s at stakes for the Catholic Church in all of this?
Pia Oppel Well, for the Church, the question is actually pretty simple. Do they need Caritas or not?
Jean-Claude Franck Caritas is a tool for helping people in need. And a way to get involved in the public debate on social issues.
Pia Oppel In the summer of 2024, the Diocese has to decide whether or not that is reason enough to save Caritas.
Jean-Claude Franck We now know that it wasn’t. Instead, the Church distanced itself from Caritas.
Jean-Claude Hollerich Caritas does not, after all, belong to the Archdiocese.
Pia Oppel That was Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich speaking to RTL in September 2024.
Léonardo Kahn Is there anything to his statement that Caritas doesn’t belong to the Diocese?
Jean-Claude Franck It’s half-true, but he’s leaving out a key piece of information. That Caritas Luxembourg was founded by the Diocese.
Léonardo Kahn So is the Diocese, as founder, a party to this affair, legally speaking?
Jean-Claude Franck No, legally speaking, as founder, the Diocese is not responsible for what happens at Caritas. It appoints board members, which allows it to maintain influence over the direction of the organisation. But the responsibility then lies with the board, not the Diocese.
Pia Oppel And financially, there is no obligation for the Diocese to get involved.
Jean-Claude Franck What it’s about, then, is whether the Church feels a responsibility to save Caritas. Not for legal reasons, but for moral or, if you like, political reasons.
Pia Oppel Jean-Claude Hollerich eschewed that responsibility when speaking to RTL. And initially pointed the finger elsewhere.
Jean-Claude Hollerich No-one at Caritas has been in touch with me to tell me what has happened. Neither the CEO nor the President of the Foundation has come to me and offered an explanation. All I have received is a single, short e-mail. That is it.
Jean-Claude Franck It’s true that neither the CEO nor the President of Caritas contacted the Cardinal. But it’s not correct that no-one reached out. Or that he received just one e-mail.
Pia Oppel We have also found out that, initially, the Diocese did in fact try to intervene in how the crisis was managed.
Léonardo Kahn Meaning?
Pia Oppel Well, the same evening that the fraud is exposed internally, the Cardinal gets a text saying that €61 million have been stolen from Caritas.
Jean-Claude Franck The Caritas board of directors has assigned roles. Including who is going to liaise with who – with the government, the Diocese, various lawyers and consultants, and so on.
Pia Oppel And Marie-Christine Ries, who works for the Diocese, is given the job of keeping the Cardinal and the Auxiliary Bishop up to speed. Which she does. After that initial text, she sends regular e-mail updates.
Léonardo Kahn And how does the Cardinal react to those e-mails?
Jean-Claude Franck He doesn’t appear to respond, initially. But then, on 25 July, i.e. nine days after becoming aware of the fraud, the Cardinal has a chat with Marie-Christine Ries.
Pia Oppel We should clarify here that both the Cardinal and Marie-Christine Ries declined to speak to us.
Léonardo Kahn Were you still able to find out what was said during that exchange of 25 July?
Jean-Claude Franck Yes, at least in part, because we were able to consult the reports written by the Caritas board. And those reports reveal something key that has not previously been revealed. Namely, that on 25 July the Cardinal demanded the resignation of the entire board.
Léonardo Kahn The entire board? What prompts that?
Jean-Claude Franck Well, the Cardinal appears to have come to the conclusion that the board members have to take responsibility for what has happened.
Pia Oppel That’s one way of looking at it, but the timing is astonishing. Jean-Claude Hollerich makes his demand on 25 July. Yet the government had made it clear just a day earlier that they relied on the board of directors as their contact within Caritas.
Luc Frieden We can only talk to the board. We need someone to talk to. But we think that the management of Caritas, the people who manage the day-to-day, they cannot be the people we talk to.
Pia Oppel The same day that Luc Frieden makes that statement, the board of Caritas also decides to start the process of potentially dismissing members of the management team. But before they can do that, the four managers are signed off sick.
Jean-Claude Franck So at this point, there is de facto no-one managing day-to-day operations at Caritas. The board of directors is left to manage the crisis at Caritas entirely on its own. And that is the moment when Jean-Claude Hollerich says the 14 board members need to resign.
Léonardo Kahn How does the board react to that?
Jean-Claude Franck We know they didn’t resign. But the records don’t make it clear why. So we asked board spokesperson, Nathalie Frisch, about it.
Pia Oppel What did you make of it when you heard that?
Nathalie Frisch (laughs) Can I play my second Joker? No, I mean, I thought it was an absolute impudence. For us, it was our sense of responsibility to the staff and the beneficiaries that stopped us from doing it. But, in a way, perhaps we should have resigned.
Pia Oppel If the board had in fact resigned, that would have actually shifted the onus onto the Diocese, they’re the ones who would have had to find a way to manage the crisis at Caritas.
Jean-Claude Franck It seems the Cardinal realised that too, because he changes his mind again just a few hours later.
Nathalie Frisch I assume there might be a few other people behind the scenes who have perhaps said: are you aware of the consequences?
Because, I mean, his reaction was obvious, it was spontaneous, at the very least it wasn’t entirely thought through. To put it mildly.
Jean-Claude Franck However, on the same day that Jean-Claude Hollerich first demands that the board resign only to change his mind, the board of directors makes another proposal which receives the Cardinal’s blessing.
Léonardo Kahn Which was?
Jean-Claude Franck To ask Erny Gillen if he could help the board with day-to-day crisis management. He was exactly the sort of person they were after because they effectively had no management anymore.
Léonardo Kahn I think we need a brief explanation here. Who is Erny Gillen and what exactly is he asked to manage?
Pia Oppel Erny Gillen was a long-time director at Caritas. But also a Vicar General, i.e. second-in-command of the Diocese after the Archbishop.
Jean-Claude Franck So for many years he was the link between Caritas and the Church, which this episode is about.
Pia Oppel And on 25 July, the Cardinal calls up Erny Gillen and asks if he could take over crisis management at Caritas as a sort of interim CEO. They were looking for someone who could run Caritas day-to-day because they didn’t have a management team anymore.
Pia Oppel Erny Gillen says no. We’ll come on to why later.
Pia Oppel Hello. I have a meeting with Mr Gillen. Am I in the right place?
Pia Oppel In Belair, in the old Franciscan cloister, Erny Gillen rents out a little office.
Erny Gillen Yes, it’s all you need.
Pia Oppel Erny Gillen started working for himself some years ago and advises organisations and businesses on ethical issues.
Erny Gillen Because morality doesn’t fall from the sky, it has to be crafted by hand. And morals and ethics have long been a part of my life.
Léonardo Kahn What do we need to know about Erny Gillen’s career?
Pia Oppel He’s ordained as a priest in 1985, at age 25. But he never actually works as a priest. He does a PhD in ethics and then starts teaching at the seminary.
Jean-Claude Franck He was also involved with Caritas from a young age.
Erny Gillen So when I was 15, it’s almost unthinkable these days, I was looking for work during the school holidays, you know, and then I read in the paper that Caritas was looking for youth leaders.
Pia Oppel From then on, Erny Gillen is a permanent fixture at Caritas holiday camps. And he stays with Caritas, becoming director in the early 90s. Caritas is still a very small organisation at this point. But growing rapidly.
Jean-Claude Franck Caritas is headed up by an ordained priest until 2013, so for nearly a quarter of a century.
Erny Gillen So I was a clergyman, albeit a clergyman without a Roman collar. I went around in a red or blue or green tie.
Pia Oppel Caritas, which was founded 100 years ago, was never an initiative of “clergymen”, to borrow Erny Gillen’s term. Caritas is an organisation that originated in civil society.
Erny Gillen The inspiration came quite clearly from what we would today call Christian civil society.
Jean-Claude Franck It’s not until the early 90s, i.e. exactly when Erny Gillen becomes director, that the Diocese takes on a more formal role. Caritas the non-profit becomes a charitable foundation, and the Diocese is the founder of that foundation.
Pia Oppel And as Erny Gillen describes it, in those days there was a sort of competition between the Church and Caritas.
Erny Gillen Now and then, someone would say or write that Caritas is the beautiful face of the Church. As in, it expresses what the Church actually has to be. And we were obviously of the opinion that the Church as an institution had to be more like Caritas.
Pia Oppel What would that have meant in practical terms?
Erny Gillen Well, actually getting out there sometimes. And seeing for oneself what poverty is, in order to understand the world we are operating in.
Pia Oppel Under Erny Gillen, Caritas also becomes quite involved in public debate. And that creates tensions, such as in May 2003 when he gives the Octave Sermon.
Erny Gillen So it’s an evening where the church, as in the Cathedral, was packed to the rafters. The politicians of the time were there too. I gave a sermon on the topic of refugees and about cold and warm hearts. It ruffled a lot of feathers.
Jean-Claude Franck Erny Gillen’s sermon put today’s PM in the crosshairs. At that time, Luc Frieden was Minister of Justice and was in charge of immigration
Erny Gillen A discussion took place in the Rectory garden. After the closing procession. That is, when Bishop Franck had to come face to face with Mr Junker who was rather put out. Plus his then Minister of Finance and Justice who felt his toes had been stepped on.
Pia Oppel That minister being Luc Frieden.
Erny Gillen Yes, yes, exactly. We even had it out with each other on television. At that point, the institutional Church, naturally, had the impression that Caritas, or me personally, had gone a touch too far.
Léonardo Kahn So there were tensions during the period where the Church was closely intertwined with Caritas through Erny Gillen. But that era, as you said, comes to an end in 2013. What does that departure mean for the relationship between Caritas and the Church?
Jean-Claude Franck In the years after that, there is another change which widens the gap between them. Caritas amends its statutes so that the Archbishop is no longer automatically the President of Caritas Luxembourg.
Pia Oppel That happens following a request from Jean-Claude Hollerich who became Archbishop in 2011 And who, unlike his predecessors, does not want to head up Caritas.
Léonardo Kahn So, putting some distance between Caritas and the Church?
Pia Oppel That’s effectively what it looks like for a while. But it’s interesting that we then see a thawing of relations in more recent years, just as Marc Crochet becomes CEO of Caritas in 2021.
Jean-Claude Franck We already mentioned this briefly in previous episodes. Marc Crochet was keen to do projects with the Church. And to shift the focus back to the Christian values that define Caritas.
Léonardo Kahn So Caritas and the Church are more or less closely intertwined for decades. But then summer 2024 happens. Caritas is facing extinction and the Diocese has to decide whether the Church can live without it. We now know that Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich initially gets involved in managing the crisis. On 25 July 2024, he demands that the entire board of directors resign. Only to change his mind again soon after. At which point he makes another proposal. Namely that Erny Gillen step in at Caritas as crisis manager. What exactly prompts that proposal?
Jean-Claude Franck So originally the proposal came from the board of Caritas itself. The Cardinal then makes the call to Erny Gillen on 25 July to ask if he’d be willing to jump back into the saddle. Which, by the way, shows once again that there absolutely was contact between Caritas and the Cardinal in those first few days.
Erny Gillen So, when I was asked, I had a day of feeling awful. Because emotionally, I’m obviously heavily invested in everything Caritas stands for in our society.
And I asked myself, can I help them out or not?
Pia Oppel Were you told, Mr Gillen, if you step in now, then we’ll come up with the money to save all of it? Was that clear or not?
Erny Gillen So, at that point I felt it was clear that they were going to let Caritas go under.
Pia Oppel To say to someone, here, do this job and by the way we’re going to bail on you first thing, that’s kind of an impossible situation, isn’t it?
Erny Gillen Only you say no to impossibles, don’t you?
Pia Oppel Erny Gillen says the conversation with the Cardinal on 25 July lasted around seven to eight minutes.
Jean-Claude Franck He declined to reveal what exactly the Cardinal told him. But the conclusion he took from that conversation was this.
Erny Gillen Well, I think Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, he has opportunities on an international level so to speak, as in, within the Church. And he also had to think carefully about his personal image to decide what role he, as the Church, wanted to take on here in Luxembourg.
Jean-Claude Franck A brief bit of context: Jean-Claude Hollerich was one of Pope Francis’ closest advisors in the Vatican. And there has been a lot of media speculation in recent years that Jean-Claude Hollerich could himself be a future Pope.
Pia Oppel Something which many Vatican experts have ruled out. But now, after the death of Pope Francis, it remains to be seen how that plays out. What is clear, however, is that Jean-Claude Hollerich remains keen to play a role in the Catholic Church at an international level.
Léonardo Kahn So Erny Gillen claims that Jean-Claude Hollerich kept a low profile during the crisis at Caritas, so that the scandal wouldn’t come back to bite either him or the Diocese. What should we make of that comment?
Jean-Claude Franck Well, what has become clear is that the Diocese has kept its distance. Apart from the isolated interventions from the Cardinal at the very start of the crisis, the Diocese has been a thoroughly passive observer.
Pia Oppel But if the Cardinal was trying to save his own reputation, this perhaps wasn’t the smartest decision. At least that was my impression and so I asked Erny Gillen about it as well.
Pia Oppel The obvious question is: Is it less of a problem for him if Caritas goes under than if he saves it?
Erny Gillen So that’s a question I’d be asking myself if I were in his position. But then he found himself a solution, in that he says: Well yes, for me, charity work, that’s what they do out in the parish in Bonnevoie.
Pia Oppel And that’s another important point. It’s possible that, for the Cardinal, Caritas simply isn’t such an important part of the Church.
Léonardo Kahn How do you reach that conclusion?
Pia Oppel Jean-Claude Hollerich has made repeated calls in recent years for the Church to concentrate on its core business – faith.
Jean-Claude Franck Pope Francis and his predecessor have held the same view. They both queried how such a large and professional charity like Caritas can benefit the Church.
Pia Oppel Which is also what Jean-Claude Hollerich says. Caritas’ activities are “not connected to the faith community”, he said in an interview.
Jean-Claude Franck Unlike, say, the charitable work out in the parishes, according to Jean-Claude Hollerich.
Pia Oppel And the question we asked ourselves at that point was: What do the activities in Bonnevoie Parish have to do with faith?
Jij Linster My name is Jij Linster-Besch. I’m Coordinator of the “Social Team Bonnevoie” which hands out food parcels every Tuesday morning. We also distribute clothes and we serve coffee in front of the church.
Pia Oppel People are queuing up round the corner from early morning. The crowd is too big, so 150 tickets are handed out. Everyone with a ticket is allowed to pick out five food items. Doris is here every week.
Pia Oppel What was your number?
Doris Oh, I had eight.
Pia Oppel Not bad! So did you get here early to get that one?
Doris Yes, I’ve been here since 5 am.
Pia Oppel In the rain? Where were you waiting?
Doris Here, in the rain. Yes!
Pia Oppel There are a lot of people in Bonnevoie who need help. Not far from Bonnevoie Church is the Abrigado drug consumption room. The social bistro “Courage”, which until last year was run by Caritas, is just around the corner.
Pia Oppel Where will you go once you’ve had your coffee?
Doris I’ll pop over to the social bistro quickly to grab a token for the shower.
Pia Oppel And where do you sleep?
Doris I’ve got a room in Wasserbillig.
Pia Oppel There are 20 volunteers at work on the Tuesday morning when I visit Bonnevoie. And it’s not just practising Christians.
Pia Oppel And for you, is it linked to the work of the church?
Volunteer Oh no, oh no. It’s independent.
Pia Oppel So you don’t do this because you’re a believer?
Volunteer No.
Pia Oppel The idea is not to convert people in need. It’s about helping them. That’s what the church opens its doors to do.
Jij Linster I mean, we are in the church, this is also what the priest wants. Handing out food, it was his initiative.
Théo Péporté The main thing is being present, engaging with people and taking them seriously as people. It aligns with the Christian conception of humanity, that is part of this work.
Pia Oppel Théo Péporté has been involved with the Parish of Bonnevoie since he was a young man. Over 60 years now. Before retiring, he was spokesperson for the Diocese.
Jean-Claude Franck Now, he is a member of the association that organises charity work in the Parish of Bonnevoie. The work the Cardinal is so effusive about in his interviews.
Theo Péporté We try to help. But it’s not just here. There are congregations, there are NGOs that are inspired by Christian values and so on, those all still exist. Things are still happening. But Caritas was the linchpin.
Do we still need a Caritas nowadays? Yes, without question.
Pia Oppel Théo Péporté’s argument is that in times likes these, when fewer and fewer people believe or go to church, the Church has to go to them.
Théo Péporté And the actions that address society, everyone sees them. And they’re for everyone too.
Pia Oppel So while Caritas might have grown to become this huge organisation with over 500 employees, who were hired for their professional skills rather than their religious beliefs, for Théo Péporté, the organisation is clearly a part of the Church.
Jean-Claude Franck Théo Péporté isn’t alone in that opinion: it’s an argument that was raised a lot last year, both publicly and within the Church.
Pia Oppel In other words, the Diocese should have at least tried to save Caritas, perhaps with the help of congregations and other Catholic organisations.
Théo Péporté Maybe with the same result. But at least we would’ve tried. It’s always easier to say these things in retrospect. And I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that situation. But still.
Léonardo Kahn In the summer of 2024, the Diocese chose a different path. Catholic stakeholders did not rally together, Caritas was left to go under. But what exactly was it that led to that decision?
Jean-Claude Franck We had hoped to ask the Cardinal himself that question. But he delegated our interview to his Auxiliary Bishop, Leo Wagener.
Pia Oppel Morning, Pia Oppel from radio 100.7. I’m here for an interview with Mr Wagener.
Pia Oppel The headquarters of the Diocese are located right behind Cercle Cité in Luxembourg City. Leo Wagener’s office has high ceilings. It’s chilly – the heating is switched off at night to save energy. There is a sitting area with a sofa and a flat desk with a small sculpture of a blue lion on it.
Pia Oppel Because of Leo?
Leo Wagener Because of Leo.
Pia Oppel That’s always a good topic for breaking the ice.
Leo Wagener It’s an icebreaker, yes. That’s usually how the conversation starts.
Pia Oppel I’ve fallen for the trap too, then, I guess.
Pia Oppel Leo Wagener spent a long time as a priest, including in Bonnevoie. He succeeded Erny Gillen as Vicar General in 2013, a title he still holds today, in addition to Auxiliary Bishop.
Leo Wagener An Auxiliary Bishop is a bishop who assists the actual Diocesan Bishop, in our case Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich. Because he holds a lot of other missions in service of the world church. So I’m more responsible for the local issues when he’s away.
Pia Oppel So Leo Wagener is essentially the Bishop’s deputy. And as Vicar General, it is his responsibility that the Diocese has enough money to function.
Jean-Claude Franck Which brings us back to the Caritas affair. Because from day one of the crisis, the Diocese makes it clear they can’t offer financial support.
Léonardo Kahn But is that true? Did the Church really not have enough money?
Jean-Claude Franck In terms of their finances, it’s a story of contrasts. The Diocese did indeed have a deficit of around a million euros in 2023.
Pia Oppel But the Diocese isn’t poor, in particular because it owns land and buildings.
Leo Wagener And it’s also true that, because these are property projects which take a long time to actually turn a profit, we don’t just have all of this money lying around, we have to be patient and wait until we can reap the rewards.
Jean-Claude Franck In other words, the Diocese has become a property developer. They’re worried that, unless they invest in property projects, eventually they won’t be able to cover their own costs.
Leo Wagener And the Diocese can’t go risking its own future by giving a few million euros to an entirely separate entity.
Pia Oppel Since the separation of Church and State in 2018, the Diocese has had to pay the salaries of newly hired priests itself. Previously, the state paid all the salaries.
Leo Wagener So I hope that someday people will understand that we have a great responsibility to the people we employ.
Léonardo Kahn So what the Diocese is saying is that their investments are precarious and they’re worried that eventually they won’t be able to pay their staff. So they can’t give Caritas any money. Have I understood correctly?
Pia Oppel Yes, that’s exactly their argument.
Léonardo Kahn OK, back to our timeline, then. The Diocese was notified as soon as the fraud was uncovered internally. After that, updates were sent by e-mail. In July, the Cardinal demands that the board resign, then changes his mind and asks Erny Gillen to take over as crisis manager. He declines. What next? Where does the Diocese go from here?
Pia Oppel Well, the first thing to mention is that obviously I also asked Leo Wagener about the Cardinal’s interventions in July. But I was given the same answer every time.
Leo Wagener No comment.
Pia Oppel No comment, alright.
Jean-Claude Franck And Leo Wagener’s explanation for the passive attitude the Diocese has maintained since that point is:
Leo Wagener For us, it was clear that the matter was now in the hands of the PM. Who also said explicitly that he would sort it and that he would take care of communication. So from our side, it became a bit of a waiting game.
Pia Oppel But there was one important nuance in the PM’s statements. He said the government would do all it could to ensure that Caritas’ charitable activities continued.
Jean-Claude Franck But because of the fraud, they weren’t going to give Caritas itself any more money for the time being. So Caritas was entirely reliant on someone helping them if they wanted to restructure.
Pia Oppel And since the Diocese isn’t taking the initiative to look for solutions, it’s Caritas that ends up requesting an audience with the Cardinal. To ask for help.
Jean-Claude Franck Initially, the Diocese proposes December as a potential date for a meeting.
Léonardo Kahn December? But Caritas risks going bankrupt long before that.
Jean-Claude Franck Indeed. Leo Wagener says maybe there were some crossed wires in the office. He didn’t have a precise explanation as to why the Diocese failed to recognise the urgency of such a conversation.
Pia Oppel In any case, at the insistence of Caritas, a meeting is eventually called for 7 August. Which would be three weeks after Caritas found out someone had stolen €61 million from them.
Jean-Claude Franck Caritas sends Christian Billon, the pro bono advisor heading up the crisis committee, to the meeting, together with board members Marc Hengen and Marie-Christine Ries.
Pia Oppel The Diocese is represented by the Cardinal, the Auxiliary Bishop and its CFO Marc Wagener.
Léonardo Kahn And how does that August meeting go?
Jean-Claude Franck Well, the crisis committee puts a new idea to the Diocese. That instead of saving the old Caritas, they could set up a new Caritas.
Pia Oppel There would be one or two new entities which could take over the national and, possibly, international activities. And which wouldn’t have to be lumbered with the fallout from the fraud. As in, the debts, the legal proceedings, all of that would be left behind with the old Caritas.
Jean-Claude Franck And the hope was that if the Diocese wasn’t willing to help the old organisation, then maybe they would be willing to provide enough money for a new Caritas so that it could get up and running again.
Pia Oppel But even that plan would have required huge amounts of equity, several million euros, even just to keep the national activities going.
Leo Wagener But it was made abundantly clear, without the issue ever really being addressed, that the limit we had set was well short of what they were expecting.
Pia Oppel The amount the Diocese was willing to contribute to the new Caritas was up to half a million euros. But the crisis committee knew that that wouldn’t get them very far.
Pia Oppel And that if you were not giving them more money, you wouldn’t be a relevant stakeholder anymore, or was that clear?
Leo Wagener No, that was never said in as many words.
Jean-Claude Franck The 7 August meeting did not make it any clearer what exactly a new Caritas would look like either.
Leo Wagener At the meeting, we were told we would get a draft of the statutes but we still haven’t received them.
Jean-Claude Franck On 12 August 2024, five days after the meeting between Caritas and the Diocese, the Diocese makes its very first statement regarding the crisis at Caritas. Nearly a full month after the Cardinal received a text informing him of the fraud.
[Panorama jingle]
Françoise Keller The Diocese has, for the first time, issued a statement on the fraud at Caritas.
Pia Oppel Whether and how the Diocese might be involved in founding a new Caritas is not mentioned once in the statement.
Jean-Claude Franck And by the time Caritas and the Diocese have their next meeting, Caritas has already lost all of its activities.
Léonardo Kahn We already spoke before about whether or not Caritas’ existence was in any way important for the Church. And that Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich didn’t necessarily see Caritas as an essential part of the Church. What did Léo Wagener have to say about that?
Pia Oppel He didn’t contradict the Cardinal. The Church and Caritas, it’s a friendly co-existence, nothing more, that’s what I understood from him.
Leo Wagener Everyone did their job and kept to themselves, if you like. But either way, there’s huge damage, in a number of respects. The entire scandal has definitely hurt the Church.
Jean-Claude Franck But when it comes to criticism of the Diocese for its conduct, Léo Wagener sees some contradictions.
Leo Wagener For decades, we at the Diocese were attacked for influencing the public in Luxembourg through the Wort newspaper. Then we sold Wort of our own accord. Now, we’re being accused of having no influence over society anymore. It feels liked mixed messages to me.
Léonardo Kahn So in the summer of 2024, the Diocese says it cannot offer up any money to help save Caritas. They might be willing to get involved in setting up a new Caritas. But the money needed for that new Caritas would have to come from somewhere else. That must be quite a key piece of information for the government, who don’t want Caritas’ activities to stop no matter what. As in, that the Diocese wasn’t going to make any serious financial contribution to a rescue plan. When does that message get through to them, that the Diocese can’t be counted on in the crisis?
Jean-Claude Franck We tought this becomes clear to everyone on 7 August, because of the sit-down between the Diocese and the Caritas crisis committee.
Pia Oppel But it seems as if the government knew that they were headed in that direction sooner than that.
Pia Oppel Did you receive that info on 7 August that the church won’t be of much help? Or when does that message reach you?
Luc Frieden Maybe even before that because I also had a phone call with the Cardinal, but I don’t remember when exactly. I wanted to know: What are you going to do then?
Jean-Claude Franck The PM didn’t just have a telephone call with the Cardinal before 7 August. He also saw the Cardinal for lunch.
Léonardo Kahn And when was that?
Jean-Claude Franck That was back on 22 July. So Jean-Claude Hollerich is hosting Luc Frieden at the Bishop’s residence six days after the fraud has been uncovered.
Pia Oppel We don’t know exactly what they talked about over that lunch. The Diocese declined to comment. And the Ministry of State said they discussed the planned visit from the Pope in September.
Jean-Claude Franck But it’s hard to imagine that they didn’t talk about Caritas at all.
Pia Oppel Plus, the PM himself says that he was definitely aware of the Cardinal’s position before 7 August. Luc Frieden also says:
Luc Frieden If someone says, I don’t have any money, what am I supposed to do? I’m not the Catholic Church.
Léonardo Kahn What should or, perhaps to put it another way, what can the government do to get the crisis at Caritas under control?
Jean-Claude Franck Join us next time to find out.
Léonardo Kahn That will be episode 6 of the Caritas Affair. Thank you Pia, thank you Jean-Claude!
Pia Oppel Pleasure!
Jean-Claude Franck Thanks, until next time.
Léonardo Kahn You’ve been listening to Scene Change, the 100.7 investigative podcast. Scene Change is produced by Pia Oppel, Charlotte Bruneau, Tessy Troes and me, Léonardo Kahn. With additional help by Jean-Claude Franck, Yves Stephany, Semir Demic, Anke Meisen, Jo Diseviscourt, Ana Angel and Chris Zeien.
Sound and mixing: Sam Erpelding and Ingo Dumlich.
To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe to Scene Change wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have any questions or want to give us feedback, drop us an e-mail at doku@100komma7.lu.
Translation: Rob Myatt and Pia Oppel.
