Former US president Barack Obama will join German Chancellor
Angela Merkel to speak at a Protestant church gathering in Berlin in May, the
organisers said Tuesday.
Obama, a regular churchgoer, will participate in a
discussion called “Engaged in shaping democracy — taking responsibility at home
and in the world” on May 25 at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.
It is part of this year’s Kirchentag (Church Day), which
runs from May 24 to 28, and is expected to attract 140,000 visitors.
Co-hosted by the Obama Foundation and Germany’s Evangelische
Kirchentag (Protestant Church Day), the event will also feature Reverend Thabo
Makgoba, the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town.
This year’s Church Day comes as Germany commemorates the
500th anniversary of the Reformation, a seismic theological shift started by
Martin Luther who criticised the indulgences of the Catholic Church and
challenged the authority of the Pope and place of the saints.
Luther’s 95 theses, which he nailed to the door of a church
in eastern Germany’s Wittenberg in 1517, led to the split with the Catholic
church and gave birth to Protestantism.
Obama, who developed a close working relationship with
Merkel during eight years in the Oval Office, visited Berlin in November as
part of his last foreign tour before handing over to President Donald Trump.
It was also in the German capital where Obama held the
biggest rally of his 2008 watershed campaign.
Although Merkel barred him from speaking at the Brandenburg
Gate, Obama — then a senator — drew 200,000 cheering fans to the nearby Victory
Column monument for a speech about ripping down walls of division.
He finally spoke at the Brandenburg Gate in 2013, to an
audience of invited guests.
By AFP
