Living with the oath of celibacy can become a burden for a priest. But it is not only the clergy who suffer – the women who live with them in a secret relationship are also affected. Martina Gmelch is no exception.
Frank and Martina’s fingertips touch briefly. The two are sitting in a touring bus to Prague. Outside, the landscape passes by. A smile rushes over Martina’s face. The two have already confessed their love for each other some time ago. „Father, where do you have your hands?“ there is a sudden sharp sound from the back seats. Martina and Frank flinch. They were almost exposed.
Today both of them are able to laugh at such shock moments. They are sitting at the dining table in their little house in a district of Ulm. On the wall there are photos of their children and a painting of Prague’s old town. Martina, 36 years old, with a black short hairstyle and a bright look, pours herself an apple spritzer. Her husband Frank, 46, puts his smartphone in the breast pocket of his shirt, stands up and walks over to the living room. Lennard and Zacharias, five and three years old, are playing with their fire trucks. „Come on, get dressed, boys! We’re going over to the playground now,“ Frank calls out to them. The children run cheering to the front door. Until 2010 Frank served as a priest. He was secretly with Martina for eight years before he resigned his priesthood because of her. „The time was really tough,“ says Martina. Although Frank had taken the oath of celibacy, it was his wife who suffered the most.
The two met in 2002 on a trip to Tanzania. Martina, at that time 19, was traveling with the One World Group of her hometown Ansbach. Frank, then 28, accompanied the group as the priest of the parish. „We were really young back then,“ says Martina, holding up a photo from the trip. On the photo she sits next to Frank on a wooden chair and smiles stealthily into the camera. Frank and Martina’s rooms were connected by a balcony. When Martina hung out her laundry in the evening, she met Frank there while smoking. That’s how they started talking.
In the beginning the meetings were coincidental. In the course of the trip – they were in Africa for three weeks – the conversations on the shared balcony became a daily ritual. „Once I asked him if he had never thought of having a family. He replied: `Who knows – if I were ten years younger and met you, how life would have gone´“, says Martina. “ Luckily it was already dark, otherwise he would have seen how I had become red. The statement surprised me indeed. It came from a priest’s lips!“
Back in Ansbach the two texted. They saw each other at the Sunday services, but never spoke in private. One day a message with the abbreviation „Hdl“ came from Frank. Love you. „Oh God, that’s our priest and now he’s writing something like that,“ Martina remembers her reaction. But somehow this SMS made her happy.
At the end of November 2002 they finally met for dinner. Frank brought up the topic that had preoccupied them both since their trip to Africa: „Is it love?“. „He paused for an artistic break, as he always did in his sermons,“ Martina says. „My only thought: Keep talking!”
„Yes, it’s love,“ Frank finally admitted. „I was totally happy in that moment. I was feeling the same for him,“ Martina says. But how could they live with this love? Celibacy committed Frank to a celibate life. A vow that every Catholic priest must make before he is ordained.
The Bishop of Passau, Stefan Oster, is sitting in his armchair, across from an old, lavishly decorated farmer’s cupboard. The rest of the room is furnished in a simple and modern style. Oster is known for his conservative attitude towards celibacy. The churchman adjusts his silver chain with the large cross. „The inner meaning of the celibate life form is: I want to be a person who is open and capable of love for the many. It is the way of life of Jesus that we live,“ explains Oster.
Celibacy was introduced in 1139. Before that, it was customary for priests to have a wife and children. The Church paid maintenance to the families. Historians suggest that these high costs were a reason for the introduction of celibacy.
Although abstinence has now been criticized by many as outdated, the Bishop of Passau has taken the vow: „I consider celibacy to be meaningful and livable for the people who are called to it. To abolish celibacy would perhaps even be a loss for the Church“.
Frank, too, did not want to give up his ministry at first. „His profession really fulfilled him,“ says Martina. The photo she is now holding in her hand shows her next to Frank at the altar. Frank in his green priest’s robe casts a stealthy glance at her while Martina reads from the Bible. In order for Frank to continue working as a priest, they decided not to show themselves as a couple in public. “ The pressure of secrecy was delightful during the first few months. But that eases quite quickly and becomes psychological pressure,“ says Martina and sighs. Only a few people from her circle knew about her relationship at all. That’s why they could only experience twosomeness at Martina’s home. Her parents supported her and Frank right from the start. Frank’s mother, on the other hand, was strictly Catholic. Her son, the priest, was her pride and joy. For a long time she had known nothing about the relationship.
One of the few ways to spend undisturbed time together was on vacation. But Martina and Frank also had to fear being discovered abroad. „During a hiking holiday we met a couple that Frank knew from his time as chaplain. We were totally tense and had to think of a lie in order not to get caught. It’s suspicious when a priest is alone on the mountain with a woman,“ says Martina. They told us that they were traveling with Martina’s youth group from Ansbach. The couple then invited Frank to dinner with them. „They thought he lived with me and the group in the youth hostel. There would certainly be no good food,“ says Martina. So Frank had dinner in the evening and Martina was sitting alone in the apartment.
After graduating from high school, Martina started studying in Bamberg. There is also the seat of the bishop who was responsible for Frank. „It wasn’t so noticeable when he was in town more often,“ says Martina. She studied teaching with a major in religion and German. „I was perhaps a little blue-eyed in my choice of subjects: a religious teacher who loves a priest! But religion has always interested me“.
Every weekend she drove back home almost 100 kilometers to be with Frank. „People thought I had a parent complex because I was always at home. I was the grey mouse who never had a boyfriend,“ says Martina, kneading her hands.
Yet Martina was quite rebellious. When priestly ordinations took place in the Bamberg cathedral, she printed 500 leaflets. „For the freedom of love, against compulsory celibacy,“ it said in black letters. In the right corner there was a priest and a woman embracing each other. Martina was living not far from the cathedral. During the consecration service she ran to the parking lot where the vehicles of the clergy were parked. „I disguised myself so that no one would recognize me,“ she said. Then she stuck one of the leaflets to each windshield.
Frank and Martina didn’t want to hide their relationship for the rest of their lives. The great hope they both clung to was the election of a new Pope. The two hoped for a more liberal church leader who would overturn celibacy. In that case Frank would have been able to keep his job and officially live with Martina. The relationship had already been in secret for two and a half years when Pope John Paul II died.
But after his death the great disappointment came: the conservative Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope and the abolition of celibacy was thus far off. „We are Pope,“ was the headline of the Bild newspaper at the time. „I was sitting in my dormitory crying,“ says Martina. „Only one thing was certain at that time: If our relationship would have broken up, it wouldn’t have been because we didn’t get along, but only because of celibacy.“
Bishop Oster is holding his hands in front of his body, fingertip on fingertip. „Of course, celibacy is another provocation for society. It can also be a positive impulse. But of course it is a challenge, because celibacy can only be understood in faith,“ he says. „If people live celibacy successfully, it is a really good testimony of faith,“ he says with a smile.
After the Pope’s election Frank Gmelch finally decided: He no longer wants to hide his love. He sought advice from friendly priests who had already left celibacy. Martina felt guilty: „Because of me Frank wanted to give up the profession for which he loves so much“.
But Frank’s decision to break his oath of celibacy was not the solution to all of the problems: if Martina were to live openly with Frank, she would not have been able to pass her second state examination as a religion teacher. In order to work as a Catholic religion teacher, you need the OK of the church. Frank wouldn’t have a job after leaving the church. They were in need of the income Martina earned as a teacher. So there were only two possibilities for them: Either she changed her main subject and studied another four semesters before starting her legal clerkship. Alternatively, she could keep her relationship secret for another two years. Then she would have passed her second state examination and been employed at a school.
Both decided to take the second path: another two years of double living. „At that time I always had to lie about my private life. I didn’t officially exist in Frank’s life,“ Martina says. Although time was difficult for her husband, he didn’t suffer as much from the secret relationship as Martina did: „Frank had his job, his normal environment. And besides that, he had me,“ says Martina.
The time as a couple remained risky. After they had almost been caught by the older woman on the bus to Prague, she was also filmed by a television team there: Dieter Bohlen, a famous TV showman, was shooting a commercial in a backyard. Frank and Martina by mistake ran through the picture holding hands. “ It’s over now, we thought. Whole Germany will see us on television´“, Martina describes the moment. She doesn’t even know which product Bohlen advertised anymore. Thank God they were cut out of the spot.
In July 2010 Martina was finally allowed to officially teach Catholic religious education. From September on she was employed at a school in Neu-Ulm. Frank immediately made an appointment with the bishop. Four days later he was suspended from his clerical post, Martina and Frank were both excommunicated. Now they are no longer allowed to marry in church, no church burial is allowed, they are excluded from confession and Eucharistic celebrations. „I would not even be allowed to start at Caritas as a cleaner,“ Martina explains. She is still a religion teacher. „They certainly somehow missed that,“ she suspects and laughs. Her permission from church has not been withdrawn until today.
Priests with their own families cannot continue to serve the Church, according to Bishop Oster. „It is difficult for the community that believes that priests live a celibate life,“ he says. His arms rest on the backs of his chair. „On the one hand, we want to accompany people on their way, and also guide and support breaks. At the same time, we are struggling with the question: When and how is the Church credible in this point?
Frank, who kept a very intimate relationship with his parish in Ansbach, did not simply want to withdraw. In mid-October 2010 he and Martina thus invited the whole town to the church. „Until then, apart from a few insiders, nobody suspected anything of our relationship – after eight years,“ Martina says and laughs. When the church was filled with 600 guests to the very last seat, the two were walking to the altar hand in hand. And suddenly everyone in the church jumped up and clapped their hands.
That was the moment when the two entered the public as a couple for the first time. The game of hide-and-seek was finally over.
Frank moved to Martina. He is still working at a funeral home. He coordinates funerals and makes funeral speeches. This part of his old profession he is still able to carry out.
Frank is still a member of the church today; he even pays church tax. Martina has left. „I’ve learned that you have to make a clear distinction: There is the old institution of the church and there is faith. Throughout my life nothing has changed about my faith. But there’s a lot about my view of the Catholic Church.“
