Amical bishop Bär was loved, but had to leave after he had come across

“I could no longer stay your bishop.” Monsignor Ronald Philippe Bär spoke those words in his sermon at his official farewell to the diocese of Rotterdam, at the end of May 1994. More than a year earlier, on 17 February, Bär went under fire after he came under fire within the Catholic Church for a rumor stream about alleged homosexual relationships.

The forced departure led to a serious slump, Bär told that year NRC Handelsblad. “I was only half a human being,” he admitted in the Benedictine Abbey in Chevetogne (Ardennes), where he had moved in. “I followed the celibate law,” Bär followed. He showed that some (conservative) circles in his church wanted to get rid of him, but who exactly did not know. “They wanted me to get rid of and now I am gone,” Bär said in that interview. “That makes the stocking finished for me. It is just like when angry is talked about a person’s financial reliability. You cannot defend yourself against such rumors. “

Bär was Bishop in Rotterdam for ten years. He died on Saturday 8 March at the age of 96, Thus the diocese of Rotterdam announced.

Bär was initially known as a conservative, but later he became more liberal. Because of his openness and his understanding of criticism, he was rather loved by the believers. The National Mediabismchop, who succeeded the later Cardinal Simonis in the Maasstad, was restless, dynamic and amicable. He never drove people into the armor, he wanted to keep the unity in the church. And he was authoritative.

Camp time

Bär was born on July 29, 1928 in Menado, Indonesia. As Ronald Bär – Upon his entry into the Benedictine Klooster van Chevetogne (1953) he accepted the name Philippe, a saint who also appeals to Protestants. His father was director of a school in India. His mother, daughter of a pastor, housewife. The four sons and a daughter were given a Dutch reformed education.

In 1942 the Dutch-Indian army capitulated for Japan. In the book Along roads of mercy, conversations with Bishop Bär It states that ‘houses are being claimed, residents threaded out and taken into open trucks to an ominous uncertain future. (…) [Ronald was] Almost fourteen, so too big for a women’s camp. Ron has to leave. Places with only men’s barracks, such as Ambarawa 7. ”

His puberty is camp time, the story continues. Bär never wanted to say much about imprisonment. In 1948, a year after the family returned to the Netherlands, Bär passed his State Exam HBS. He initially wanted to study classical languages, but it became theology. During his studies in Utrecht, he felt addressed by rituals, and developed a preference for traditions. He became a Catholic. The relationship with his girlfriend ended, Bär became a monk in Belgium, then did studies in Rome and Paris and was ordained a priest.

Bär was a chaplain for years at the Air Force, after which he became bishop in 1982. He cherished a royal position on compulsory celibacy for priests. In NRC Handelsblad He said about that: “That celibacy is not part of the essence of the Sacrament of the Priesthood. There are no theological, exegetical or traditional arguments against a optional celibacy. ” In 1992 he suggested to allow mature married men to the priesthood.

Popularity

Ronald Philippe Bär celebrated his 40th anniversary as a priest in 1999. With a mass in the Rotterdam cathedral and a reception in the goals. A few thousand friends and sympathizers, including the former Premiers de Jong and Lubbers, came to congratulate him. Bär was still popular. That was also apparent from the fact that he regularly came to the Netherlands from Belgium to give lectures and to perform ecclesiastical marriages.

In 2011, the Deetman committee, who investigated sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, investigated that in the 1980s when Bär Bishop was in the diocese of Rotterdam, against the advice of the selection committee, men for the priestly thought that were deemed unsuitable for that. A number of them were guilty of sexual abuse of minors. Priests who were therefore unable to stay in Rotterdam were transferred to other dioceses with the permission of Bär.

Bär, who had a direct line with Queen Beatrix, unofficially became the Hofbishop. For example, he advised Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Máxima on the problems that could occur in the ecclesiastical part of their mixed marriage. And in September 2001, Bär blessed the (now dissolved) marriage in Van Margarita de Bourbon de Parme, the daughter of Princess Irene, with Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn. In 2010, the blessing of Carlos de Bourbon Jr., eldest son of Princess Irene, followed with Annemarie Ghalthérie van Weezel.

To share





Mail the editors