Mons. Norberto Strotmann is a German bishop who served since the 1970s in Peru, where he was Bishop of Chosica for more than 26 years. In his opinion, Pope Leo XIV “is not left or right.”
“I would not classify it either right or left, either as introverted or extrovert,” said the 78 -year prelate in an interview with Church+life (Church life), collected by Katholisch.dethe news portal of the Catholic Church in Germany.
Receive the main news of ACI Press by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social networks. Subscribe to our free channels today:
Mons. Strotmann, who was secretary of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference (CEP) when Pope Leo XIV was second vice president, in addition to Chiclayo bishop and apostolic administrator of Callao, recalled that Mons. Robert Prevost “studied mathematics before entering the Augustinians and is polyglot. He would characterize him as pragmatic.”
“In the discussions I have experienced it as a good listener and a point of calm. It is not someone who enlivens a hot debate. It can be someone who keeps together with the universal church,” said the prelate that was auxiliary bishop of Lima and the first bishop of Chosica, diocese who directed between 1997 and 2023.
After commenting that he does not expect the new Pope to “attend the wishes of regional reforms”, the bishop, who now lives in Germany, stressed that Leo XIV “has experienced, for example, in the episcopal conference of his native country, United States, how difficult it is to join conservative and progressive currents.”
“I can’t imagine that I take measures that make you lose the support of a quarter or a third of the faithful.”
“Rather, I could return the Church to its central competence, to evangelization, to faith in God and in Jesus Christ and what is derived from concrete actions for people,” said the prelate, ordered priest in 1973 in the Andes of Peru.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.