Today the trial begins against the Aachen auxiliary bishop Johannes Bündgens, who is said to have made use of the property of an elderly lady. The defendant himself has not been seen for a long time
Judging by the financial scandal that is currently shaking the Vatican, today, Tuesday, the Kerpen District Court is about peanuts. Also with regard to the sums of money in question. Nevertheless, the “Bündgens case”, since it became public in December 2019, has caused quite a stir in the diocese of Aachen – and led to a further loss of credibility for the church.
After all, it is not every day that a high Catholic dignitary has to answer as a defendant in a secular court. Auxiliary Bishop Johannes Bündgens (65) is accused by the Cologne public prosecutor of abusing the power of attorney and the trust of a possibly already demented elderly woman and of having transferred a total of 143,000 euros to his private account. Bündgens is charged with infidelity. Should he be found guilty, he will face a fine. Theoretically, the range of sentences extends to five years in prison.
As the then Kerpen district court director Joachim Rau announced, Bündgens is said to have transferred the money of the pious and wealthy widow Marga K. to his account in several “tranches” between December 2017 and January 2018. Apparently he used it to buy an apartment building in the posh south of Aachen. In return, he gave Ms. K. a lifelong right to live in the house, the auxiliary bishop, who had been suspending all offices for a good year and a half, including his chairmanship of the Diocesan Caritas Association, informed him through his lawyers. However, there is no entry in the land register, which is customary in such cases. But Bündgens has completely repaid the “interest-free loan”, as some scoffed at it.
During the on-site visit on Eupener Straße in Aachen-Burtscheid, the residents of the chic, white-plastered apartment block cannot find out much about the owner Bündgens in the meantime. They also never heard of a “senior citizens’ flat” allegedly planned by Bündgens, to which Marga K. should also belong. As research by the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” has shown, Bündgens is said to have bought the house from the community of heirs of a former senior employee in the Aachen General Vicariate. The house is said to have changed hands at that time for 600,000 euros, of course quietly and secretly.
One thing is certain: with his gross salary of an estimated 8,000 euros alone and a loan from the church-related Pax-Bank, which, according to its own account, combines “economic action with ethical objectives”, the project could not have been carried out. It is possible that Marga K.’s account opened up certain financial leeway.
And just as the property had changed hands at the time without much fuss, Bündgens and his legal advisers had apparently set on being able to resolve the cause just as quietly and secretly. The transactions were exposed when a supervisor appointed by the court because of the progressive dementia of the widow noticed the account movements and he filed a complaint.
The start of the trial has already been postponed twice because of the defendant’s medically attested inability to stand trial. Until recently, it was uncertain whether Bündgens would appear in person today. If not, the judge could appoint a medical expert. It would also be conceivable to shorten the procedure by issuing a penalty order without a main hearing.
After the allegations against him became known, the auxiliary bishop, who has been in office since 2006, is “as if swallowed by the earth,” says a diocese employee. There is a suspicion that he is in Cologne, possibly with his brother. He is a lawyer in a renowned law firm, which Christof Püschel also belongs to, one of the two defenders of the bishop.
Bündgens continues to enjoy trust and sympathy in his district. Those who stick to him describe him as reserved, affectionate, empathetic and “actually modest”. He “stumbled into a stupid thing”. That is naive and unforgivable, even without a trial he is punished enough by the attention to his case. Should he be convicted, he would also face a canonical procedure. Rome would then have to decide how to proceed – hardly in its previous functions.
Church employees and believers who are well-disposed towards the auxiliary bishop praise the commitment with which Bündgens promotes and accompanies partnership projects in Colombia and Tanzania. When visiting parishes, he appears amiable and appears without clerical conceit. And Bündgens is a decidedly athletic churchman: tennis, basketball, running, cycling. Some describe him as “Filou”. In 2016, his long-time driver announced in the Aachener diocese newspaper that his boss was “slyly behind the ears”.
Such a statement is of course read in a completely different light today. And the motto that Aachen church leaders created long before the controversial private property purchase became known for an action to encourage more participation by the faithful (“Today with you”) seems involuntarily funny. And those who are not well-disposed towards Bündgens apply it to his relationship with Marga K. She can no longer comment on the case. Ms. K. died in March 2020 at the age of 79. It is quite possible that the remote analysis of a clergyman from the Aachen area is correct, according to which Marga K. embodied the not so rare type of the “priest-worshiper” and Bündgens succumbed at least temporarily to her admiration for him as a pastor.
Bündgens and Marga K. are said to have got to know each other in Sievernich in the Düren district, where the “seer” Manuela Strack has been gathering a number of believers for more than 20 years. She claims that Our Lady told her to build a “spiritual center” in the 450-souls village. Marga K. from Kerpen was also attracted to this group, which calls itself the “Blue Oasis” and whose work is registered extremely skeptically by the official church. With great enthusiasm and probably with large sums of money she supported the “Friends of the Sievernich Prayer and Meeting Place”.
Regular visitors like Annegret B. from Euskirchen remember the “merry widow” – and Bündgens “in her tow”. At that time he was pastor in the Eifel town of Heimbach – and was appointed by the Aachen shepherd Heinrich Mussinghoff as the “spiritual leader” of the Manuela medium. Through his regular visits to Sievernich, which he continued as auxiliary bishop, Bündgens almost inevitably got to know Marga K. In the following period there should have been regular meetings in their large house in Kerpen. At her insistence, it is said.
