A selfie with the star of the gay dating show “Prince Charming” changed the life of Henry Frömmichen. He was thrown out of the seminary and had to give up his dream job.
Munich (dpa) – With the hashtag “lifechanger”, the 21-year-old Henry Frömmichen signed the selfie on Instagram that may have actually changed his life.
It’s a spontaneous photo with Alexander Schäfer, the “Prince Charming” from the dating show of the same name, the gay “Bachelor” version. Taken on an apparently cold evening at a bus stop in Munich, with Odeonsplatz in the background.
What happened after Frömmichen posted the picture made headlines at the end of April. According to him, the selfie with “Prince Charming” is the reason that he was thrown out of the Catholic seminary after just three months. The head of the seminary discovered the photo on Instagram and that was then “the trigger” for his expulsion, says Frömmichen of the German press agency on Sunday after a blessing service for gay and lesbian couples in Munich, where he was an altar boy .
After discovering the photo, the seminar leader accused him, “I would show solidarity with homosexual people and propagate the kind of homosexuality that is being portrayed on television,” says Frömmichen, who claims to have been three before entering seminar Was with a man for years.
The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising does not want to comment on the reasons why the young man had to leave the seminary on request. Likewise, the seminar leader Wolfgang Lehner. But he emphasizes: “If someone is homosexual, but manages to calmly develop a healthy relationship with men and women, if this topic of sexuality is not always in the foreground, I see no reason why he should not become a priest can be.”
Even if the selfie may have cost him his dream job, Frömmichen does not regret it, as he emphasizes. “I think it is important, especially in this day and age, to simply show your colors and just stand up for that and stand up for the people who are important to you,” he says. “I think this is especially important for the young people who simply see: Okay, there is someone who is gay, but he wants to go this way, wants to become a priest.”
Pious wants to help change something in the church. That is why he was also present at the Munich blessing service, at which the Catholic priest Wolfgang Rothe blessed several same-sex couples in protest against the Vatican’s express ban. The service is part of an orchestrated, Germany-wide campaign under the motto #liebegewinnt. These days, blessings are to be made from Aachen to Zornheim, from Munich via Würzburg, Frankfurt, Cologne and Berlin to Quakenbrück.
The background to the protest is a so-called Responsum ad dubium (answer to a doubt) by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in March of this year. It made it clear that the Catholic Church was not authorized to bless homosexual partnerships. Blessings in human relationships are only possible, it says, if they serve God’s purposes. Any form of blessing that recognizes homosexual partnerships is not permitted.
Thereupon an outcry went through the Catholic Church in Germany, which now also gives pious hope: “On the one hand I am released from the seminary, kicked out and elsewhere in the church I am welcomed with open arms,” he says. “That is of course a very great gift for me personally.” It could also “be a sign for all believers, for all people in our communities, that the church is now slowly opening up and that we are now openly confessing to it and saying: We bless couples who love each other, regardless of their sexuality. “
The young man, who currently works as a funeral advisor, has not yet given up his own dream of becoming a priest either: “Someday, God willing.” Another hashtag under his selfie with “Prince Charming” on Instagram is: #nevergiveup – and #ambitious , ambitious.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210510-99-535772 / 2
Burkhard Hose Twitter
Call for action #more blessings
#love won
Henry Frömmichen and “Prince Charming” on Instagram
