Ms. Welskop-Deffaa, is it possible that you are the most important employer in Germany?

Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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You could say it like that, but that would be very short.

Caritas employs 700,000 people full-time and a further 500,000 on a voluntary basis.

However, the employment relationships are with many legally independent institutions, we are not a group, but an association.

Being its president is kind of a dream job for me.

I am enthusiastic about the fact that and how we are socially efficient in the interaction of full-time and voluntary work.

And we convince as Caritas by not only pointing out problems, but actively working on their solutions ourselves.

What do you mean?

For example, if we notice in our counseling centers that new drugs are in circulation, then we report this to politicians so that they can take action.

And at the same time we offer new types of addiction counseling, for example on the street.

Not only to make demands, but also to have to and be able to find answers yourself immediately, that is incredibly fascinating.

It is a great pleasure to be the face of such an association.

An unfamiliar face: you are the first woman and the first non-theologian.

That's true, but the founding meeting of the Caritas association 125 years ago in Cologne was chaired by a lawyer, not a priest.

All presidents had economic expertise, my predecessor was originally a banker.

As an economist, I fit in well with that.

So your election is not an expression of a Catholic paradigm shift?

It's about having a personality at the head of Caritas who guarantees audibility in public space. It is plausible to assume this today in the case of a woman who has already held senior positions in ministries and not to base this on whether the person is ordained. Especially on the synodal path, in the process of church reform, one senses that there is an intensive questioning: for which leadership tasks is consecration really a prerequisite? In ordinariates, too, positions are increasingly being held by lay people, vicar generals for example. I therefore see the election of a woman as President of Caritas as the logical continuation of an opening process. And yet it is a turning point when you sit on committees where there have previously only been men. But I already know thatI was also the first consultant in the Central Committee of German Catholics.

You sat on the national board of Verdi.

What is it like to be on the other side of the table as a powerful employer?

I see myself as a president, not as an employer representative, I am the representative of both sides of our Caritas service community.

It is helpful to know both sides.

With the experience of lived social partnership, I don't expect everything to come from politics, but that many issues can be better negotiated between employer and employee.

What for example?

Think of the nursing care premium, which is now being discussed again.

It was and is an unfortunate political idea to react politically to the challenges of the pandemic with bonuses.

It was thought that a one-off payment would be a liberation.

But Corona is now in its third year, and this logic means that new premiums are always needed.

This does not work because the definition of the group of recipients leads to discord in the institutions and also between the institutions.

Some of our carriers, for example, have care facilities and facilities for the disabled on the same site.

Some get the bonus, others don't.

Many employees perceive the process as a burden rather than recognition;

some people want to crawl into the nearest mouse hole when they only hear the word care premium.