Berlin's Archbishop recalls fall of wall

(Nov.10,2009): On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the city's archbishop recalled the moment of Germany's reunification with gratitude. Cardinal Georg Maximilian Sterzinsky said that when the border between East and West Germany was opened Nov. 9, 1989, he "couldn't believe it." He had just been ordained a bishop on Sept. 9, and explained that he had been travelling to Rome to visit the Pope when the wall fell. "Watching Italian television,
I saw the citizens of East Berlin as they crossed the borders," the prelate recalled. "The next day I learned what had happened." Still today, when recalling that event, he said that he feels "above all, gratitude." "After what had happened in Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, China" the cardinal explained, all of us in the German Democratic Republic [East Germany] "seriously feared that it could end in violent confrontations."
Cardinal Sterzinsky noted that among Germans today, "the euphoria over the fall of the wall has vanished." Although some people imagined that after this event the churches would be filled, he said, it did not happen quite as expected. He said "No doubt many have placed in newly united Germany expectations that haven't been realized." The East and the West "have developed together in many areas," he observed, but "there are still fundamental differences."