Hans Küng, a Swiss Catholic theologian very critical of the Church, died Tuesday in Tübingen (Germany) at the age of 93, announced the Foundation for a Planetary Ethics, which he had founded.
"With Hans Küng, we lose the charismatic and impressive creator of the Foundation and a visionary thinker for a more just and peaceful world,"
the Foundation said in a statement.
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Born March 19, 1928 in Switzerland, Hans Küng was emeritus professor of ecumenical theology at the University of Tübingen (southwest).
He retired from public life in 2013 for health reasons.
The cause of the death of this promoter of dialogue between religions has not been specified.
In 1979, the Vatican banned Hans Küng, one of the youngest participants in the Second Vatican Council, from teaching Catholic theology, following a controversy over the
Pope's
dogma of
“infallibility”
.
More recently, in 2010, the theologian demanded that Pope Benedict XVI do his "mea culpa" on the way pedophilia cases have been handled for decades.
Hans Küng had not spared the attitude of the German episcopate either, shaken by a series of revelations of former sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy.
Hans Küng welcomed the election in 2013 of Argentine cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis,
"the best possible choice (...) because he is a Latin American with an open mind".