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New design of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin sparks both praise and criticism

November 25, 2024 Catholic News Agency 1
St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin, Germany. / Cedric BLN via Wikimedia (Public domain).

CNA Deutsch, Nov 25, 2024 / 12:01 pm (CNA).

The Archdiocese of Berlin celebrated the reopening of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral on Sunday after more than six years of renovation work. The interior has been given a state-of-the-art makeover, but not everyone is responding with enthusiasm. 

In his homily on Sunday, Berlin Archbishop Heiner Koch summarized the intention behind the new design: “In the current renovation of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral according to the designs of architect Peter Sichau and artist Leo Zogmayer, it was important to us that Catholics find a home here in this church and that people who do not share our faith also feel addressed by the language of the architecture and the artistic design and can perceive this church as a place of reflection, conversation, and open searching.”

Ulrich L. Lehner, the Warren Foundation Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, in a post on X shared his response to the design of the cathedral writing: “This is what 40 million get you for your new Cathedral when you are a #Catholic Bishop in Germany: an eggshell altar. Dedicated to the ‘supreme being”? The building is a visible sign for the dead #German #church – it is a shell without any life inside. Nobody will pray here.”

Koch spoke to the hopes and disappointments people may have when they see the renovations, saying in his sermon that “the design of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral addresses the dark experiences of many people.”

“For example, in the crypt in the Neapolitan nativity scene, the depiction of the birth of Christ includes the poverty and the drama of the flight of so many people,” he said. “On the Way of the Cross in the crypt, which takes up the suffering of many people, is the chapel in which the guilt of the church over the course of its 2,000-year history and the suffering it has caused find expression. In addition, our recent history in Germany is taken up, in which we failed and did not sufficiently address the violation of human dignity.”

The archbishop continued: “As Christians, we believe in the good God, who holds our lives and our history and the future of the world in his hands and who has given us salvation in Jesus Christ. We believe in God, who leads people’s lives to fulfillment, who has torn open the heavens and gives us a healthy, meaningful and fulfilling future that allows us to live together and leads our lives to unfold.”

Against this background, the crypt, he said, “does not stop at people’s dark experiences, but shows itself to be a place of hope. The tomb of Blessed Bernhard Lichtenberg and the tombs of the bishops bear witness to the hope of resurrection that fills us.”

The redesigned interior of the Berlin cathedral takes up the “confession of Christ, the Savior, the fulfillment and completion of our lives and our future”, explained Koch. 

“The center of the cathedral is the altar as a symbol of Christ, of his life, suffering, death and resurrection. The church gathers around it and honors him in the liturgy. The community of believers gathers around it with the bishop, whose cathedra is inserted into this circle of believers around the altar as a sign of his task and his authority to lead and teach his diocese. Saint Hedwig thus becomes an expression of the idea of communion, which we have placed at the center of our life in the Archdiocese of Berlin and to which we are committed in the development of the synodality of our Church: communion with God and with one another.”

During his time as Cardinal and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Benedict XVI categorized such a design of the interior of churches with the words: “The turning of the priest towards the people now forms the congregation into a self-contained circle. In terms of form, it is no longer open towards the front and above, but is closed in on itself.”

Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, in contrast, said he is delighted with the new interior of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral.“When I entered the room, I was completely overwhelmed. I was speechless at the brightness, the size, and the freedom that this space breathes. It is actually unrecognizable when you compare it to the room I remembered.”

Woelki was Archbishop of Berlin from 2011 to 2014.

“The Pantheon was brought to Berlin from Rome,” Woelki said on Sunday in an interview with Cologne Cathedral Radio. “The altar is at the very center. Christ is at the center, next to it the cross, the ambo, from there the proclamation of the Word and overall simplicity. The space gives freedom, but at the same time it also creates a closeness to one another. People now sit much closer and kneel much closer to the salvation that takes place on the altar.”

St. Hedwig’s Cathedral dates back to the 18th century. The building burned down during the Second World War. When it was rebuilt, it was already a very modern church. A few decades later, it was re-redesigned, initiated by Woelki.

This article was originally published by CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German language news partner, and has been translated and adapted for CNA.

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News Briefs

No, ‘AI Jesus’ isn’t actually hearing confessions: fact check

November 21, 2024 Catholic News Agency 1
null / Credit: Image created using OpenAI’s DALL·E through ChatGPT

CNA Staff, Nov 21, 2024 / 15:50 pm (CNA).

Numerous news reports in recent days reported that a new artificially intelligent “Jesus” has begun taking people’s confessions at a Catholic church in Switzerland. 

Claim: A holographic “AI Jesus” has been created and deployed at a chapel in Switzerland specifically to hear confessions.

CNA finds: St. Peter’s Chapel in Lucerne, a historic parish church, recently installed “an innovative project that explores the use of virtual characters based on generative artificial intelligence in a spiritual context” in collaboration with the Immersive Realities Research Lab at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

The AI program was reportedly trained with content from the New Testament, with the goal of allowing the “Jesus” avatar to verbally respond, in one of 100 languages, to questions about the Bible from people entering the confessional. 

(Numerous reports described the “Jesus” avatar as a “hologram,” which is a 3D projection created with lasers; but a Deutsche Welle video of the installation in action showed that the artificial face of “Jesus” merely appeared on a curved computer monitor behind the confessional screen.) 

The installation is titled “Deus in Machina” (a Latin phrase meaning “God in the machine” and a play on the more commonly used literary phrase “Deus ex machina”). An announcement from the lab said the project, which is described as an “art exhibit,” “encourages thinking about the limits of technology in the context of religion.”

The breakdown: Despite being placed in the confessional booth, the parish notes on its website that the AI installation is intended for conversations, not confessions. Confession, also called penance or reconciliation, is one of the seven sacraments of the Church and can only be performed by a priest or bishop, and never in a virtual setting.

A theologian at the Swiss parish said the project is also intended to help to get religious people comfortable with AI and reportedly said he does see potential for AI to help with the pastoral work of priests, given that AI can be available any time, “24 hours a day, so it has abilities that pastors don’t.”

Peter Kirchschläger, an expert in theological ethics, opined to Deutsche Welle in response to the theologian’s comments that “we should be careful when it comes to faith, pastoral care, and the search for meaning in religion. This is an area in which we humans are actually vastly superior to machines. So we should do it ourselves.”

The Swiss art project is the latest in a series of attempts — including an embrace of the technology at the Vatican itself — to make AI work in service of the Catholic faith, which so far has yielded mixed results. 

CatéGPT, for example, an artificial intelligence chatbot designed by another Swiss, engineer Nicolas Torcheboeuf, aims to provide answers to questions about Catholic teaching by drawing on authoritative documents. Other similar AI-based services have gained popularity, such as the U.S.-based Magisterium AI. 

Less successful was an AI “priest” created and unveiled earlier this year by the California-based apologetics apostolate Catholic Answers, which was criticized by some users for its video game-like priestly avatar. Moreover, at least one user managed to goad the priestly character into hearing their confession, prompting a statement from the apostolate in which it promised to replace the priest character with a lay character named “Justin.”

The verdict: The “AI Jesus” project exists, but it’s not intended to hear people’s confessions, or to replace a priest. Rather, it’s an art exhibit created by researchers at a local technical university in concert with theologians who say they want to raise questions about the use of technology in religious settings and to demonstrate the ability of AI to answer questions about the Bible. 

We rate this claim misleading.

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