Cardinal Reinhard Marx, an influential Archbishop of Munich and Freising and former head of Germany’s bishops, has been a controversial German prelate who has openly questioned established Catholic doctrine as well as faced criticism for his handling of sexual abuse cases.

Born in 1953 in Geseke, North-Rhine Westphalia, Marx studied theology and philosophy in Paderborn and the Catholic University of Paris.

Ordained to the priesthood for the archdiocese of Paderborn in 1979, he served as assistant parish priest and ecclesiastical assistant of the archdiocesan Social Institute “Kommende” in Dortmund. He earned a doctorate in theology from the University of Bochum in 1986. Three years later, he was appointed director of the Institute and served as professor of Catholic Social Teaching at the Theological Faculty of Paderborn.

Appointed auxiliary bishop of Paderborn in 1996 by Pope John Paul II, Marx received episcopal consecration at the age of 43. Five years later, he was named Bishop of Trier, the oldest diocese in Germany. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Marx metropolitan archbishop of Munich and Freising, a position Benedict held from 1977 to 1982. Marx, at the time, was considered to be on the conservative wing of the Church and Benedict elevated him to cardinal in November 2010.

The cardinal participated in the 2013 papal conclave that elected Pope Francis and almost immediately Marx began moving towards progressivism and heterodoxy. As he did so, Cardinal Marx became—and remains—one of the most influential Catholic prelates in Europe and the Vatican.

From 2013 to 2023, he served as a member of the C-9 Group of Cardinals advising Pope Francis on Church reform. He headed the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) for two three-year terms until 2018. From 2014 to 2020 he served as the president of the German bishops’ conference. He continues to serve as coordinator of the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, overseeing financial reform of the Vatican.

Eager to please an ever secular German society and beholden to considerable income from the state through the German Church tax, Marx has consistently sought to find compromises in the Church’s teaching.¹As Archbishop of Munich, in 2021 he received an annual total salary of 179,992.67 euro, official records show. In 2013, Marx was criticized for spending around $11 million renovating his archbishop’s residence and another $13 million for a guesthouse in Rome.

These pressures and his own heterodox leanings have influenced his actions. In May 2015, Cardinal Marx co-hosted a “secret synod” at the Pontifical Gregorian University which aimed to sway the Synod on the Family taking place that year towards normalizing same-sex relations in the Church based on a “theology of love.”²During the 2015 Synod on the Family, Marx also allegedly hosted lavish dinners in a multi-million-dollar German Church-owned villa in Rome, prompting observers to ask whether the German bishops were taking seriously Francis’ call for a “poor Church for the poor.”

Whether it has been about changing German Church rules to allow employment of “remarried” divorcees and homosexuals living in same-sex relationships (passed in 2015 and further relaxed in 2022) or pushing for Protestant spouses of Catholics to receive Holy Communion (approved in 2018), Marx has often won Vatican approval through strong-armed persuasion backed by the German Church’s vast wealth.

This has been especially apparent in his push for the normalization of homosexuality and same-sex relationships in the Church. In 2018 he argued for the blessing of same-sex unions, and in a 2022 interview with the mass circulation German magazine Stern, he called for Church approval of same-sex “encounters.”

Commenting in the same interview on his celebration of a Mass to mark “20 years of queer worship and pastoral care” in Munich, the cardinal said that ten or fifteen years earlier, he “could not have imagined that one day I would celebrate this service in this way,” but said that “for years I have felt freer to say what I think.”

Marx has also joined other progressive prelates and priests, such as Jesuit Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, in calling for a change in the Catechism to effectively normalize homosexual activity in the Church, and has also said he supports the ordination of homosexual men.

Cardinal Marx’s efforts to influence Catholic doctrine and morals have accelerated in recent years, often under the guise of reform and the sexual abuse crisis. He and his supporters argue that doctrine “can develop, change.” He has stated “the Catechism is not set in stone” and that one is allowed to doubt what it says.

The German Synodal Way, which he helped devise and promote, was ostensibly about Church reform after a devastating historical study of abuse cases in Germany. But with the backing of other German bishops, Marx — who made headlines in 2015 when he said “we are not just a subsidiary of Rome”— ensured the multi-year process would be unilaterally and intentionally used to introduce a raft of secular values opposed to Church teaching.

Critics of the Synodal Way, such as Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne, said it threatened to create schism. German Catholic author and thinker Martin Mosebach criticized Cardinal Marx personally for having “a history of opportunism” and said he was “driving the Church into schism and secular meaninglessness.”

On the issue of sexual abuse, in December 2020 Cardinal Marx surprised observers by establishing a charitable foundation called “Spes et Salus” (Hope and Salvation) to help victims of sexual abuse within the Church, donating 500,000 euros of his own money to start it. The foundation’s goal was to empower, encourage, and support abuse survivors on their journey towards self-empowerment and personal development.

In 2021, Marx was accused of mishandling a case in the Diocese of Trier and denying access to key documents during an investigation into sex abuse. In the same year, Marx submitted his resignation to the Pope as a symbolic gesture to take personal responsibility for the Church’s institutional failures. Francis swiftly refused his request. In January 2022, a report on sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising accused Marx of mishandling two cases of sex abuse. 

Marx has been a vocal critic of certain political movements, such as the right wing Alternative for Germany party, stating that its positions are incompatible with Catholic teachings.

He believes climate change has been as one of the two biggest challenges facing Europe, alongside the refugee crisis, and has called the need for a unified response to address these issues.

Cardinal Marx caused further controversy in 2016 when he, as head of Germany’s bishops, and bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, the head of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), removed their pectoral crosses on a visit to Israel. The incident sparked widespread criticism and debate in Germany with many viewing it as a denial of faith, a form of capitulation, and an affront to the many Christian martyrs of history who died rather than deny their faith by removing religious symbols.

Since his offer of resignation in 2021, Marx has taken a lower public profile but he continues to wield considerable influence both in the Church in Germany and at the Vatican.

From 2013 to 2021, the number of priests in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising fell from 1,216 to 960. Male religious during that period dropped from 539 to 462, and female religious declined from 2,159 to 1,461.