Hitler salutes and the chanting of Nazi slogans at migrants from the Middle East has pained German Cardinal Reinhard Marx.
Marx, the President of the German Bishops’ conference said he felt physically pained seeing protesters making the gestures and shouting the chants.
In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Marx labelled the emergence of a new xenophobia in Germany as disgraceful.
“Xenophobia and being a Catholic do not belong together”, said the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich-Freising.
The Cardinal and Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, chairman of the Protestant Church in Germany were lunching together and saw the events unfold on their smartphones when they decided to go to the Munich railway station to meet and greet the migrants arriving from Hungary.
Marx labelled their decision to go to the railway station, “spontaneous”.
Most opposition to the migrant influx is coming from the Die Rechte (right party), and the Cardinal has repeatedly spoken out against nationalist violence by Germans opposed to Angela Merkel’s open door policy to refugees.
While opposition to migrant influx is happening in pockets across Germany, the xenophobic actions are those of a vocal minority.
Generally, Germans are reaching out to the migrants.
In Munich, stockpiled food was handed out to Syrian arrivals, while in Frankfurt a human chain passed out bags of food, clothing and toiletries, and exhausted arrivals were greeted with balloons and banners saying “a warm welcome” and “we love refugees”.
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