Father Karl Jüsten, the head of the Katholisches Büro in Berlin, the German Bishops’ Conference’s official liaison office to the German government, attacked the conservative populist AfD party for calling itself “Christian” while advocating for remigration.
During his August 31 address, which also marked the first public Church appearance of Archbishop Hubertus Matheus Maria van Megen, whom Pope Leo XIV appointed as apostolic nuncio to Germany earlier this year, Fr. Jüsten called the AfD’s political platform “incompatible” with both the Catholic Church and the German Constitution for its opposition to mass migration, per German media.
The priest, after praising Germany’s constitution for not favoring one religion, which contradicts Catholic teaching on government, emphasized the AfD’s alleged advocacy for “marginalizing” a “religious community” for its “cultural foreignness,” likely a reference to Muslim migrants. He made his comments in a keynote address during the annual reception for the Catholic Office of Saxony
“Where a community violates the law, the rule of law intervenes. But it does not condemn an entire religion across the board in advance,” Fr. Jüsten said.
Turning to the AfD specifically, the priest slammed the party, which strongly opposes abortion and promotes Catholic social teaching, for its apparent “hostility” toward the Church over immigration.
“Whoever weakens the churches weakens a vital part of our lived community. And in the end, it’s not the church leadership that is affected,” he said. “It’s the people who depend on these services. Churches stand for integration and the common good.”
“The AfD invokes Christianity as a culture but opposes the churches: (The AfD) want the Christian label. But not the Caritas that takes in strangers. Not the church that stands up for the dignity of every single person,” Jüsten claimed. “Anyone who limits the church to worship alone and disputes its active charity has failed to understand the essence of the church.”
While the faithful are called to stand up for the dignity and show charity to our neighbors, including migrants, the Katholisches Büro head notably failed to mention the Church’s teaching on immigration.
In addition to affirming that immigrants should be treated with respect, Catholic social teaching also notes that a country has a right to secure its borders. In the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB’s) “Catholic Social Teaching on Immigration and the Movement of Peoples,” the conference outlines that countries are under no obligation to accept all who wish to enter.
Per the ordo amoris laid out by Doctors of the Church such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, there is also “a hierarchy of charity,” in which one must take care of one’s own family and nation before caring for foreigners.
Within the last year alone, Germany and several European countries have seen multiple terror attacks or attempted attacks carried out by Muslim migrants.
In December 2025, five Muslim men were arrested for allegedly planning a terror attack on a Bavarian Christmas market. Ironically, in July, a suspected Islamist terrorist killed one person and injured about 30 others in an attack on an LGBT “pride” event in Berlin.
In late July, thousands of migrants swarmed across the Moroccan border and overran beaches in the small Spanish territory of Ceuta. According to reports, this swarm of migrants included Islamist terrorists.
It’s possible that, in addition to the party’s immigration stance, Jüsten’s opposition to the AfD also stems from Catholic members of the party opposing the heretical German “Synodal Way.”
During an exclusive interview with LifeSite’s Andreas Wailzer back in May, Catholic AfD politician Nicole Höchst denounced the “Synodal Way” as an effort to create a “separate sect” from the Church.
“I believe this [Synodal] Way is [an] effort to found a separate sect with elements that are decidedly not Roman Catholic, such as the ceremonial blessing of same-sex ‘unions’ or ‘ordination of women,’” she said at the time.
“And that leads to a schism, in my opinion, if it isn’t already in open schism,” she added.