New memorial homepage: "Mourners need contemporary offers"

Anyone who wants to remember a deceased person can now also do so on a special website on the Internet.

We talked about it with the pastor responsible.

Riemerling

- What All Souls' Day is to Catholics, Eternal Sunday or Sunday of the Dead is to Protestants.

The Sunday before the First Advent is dedicated to the memory of the deceased.

That also means remembering the dead.

Since this year, it has been possible to do so in the media on the “gedenkenswert.de” website.

Pastor Rainer Liepold is responsible for this website.

He is a pastor in the Lore-Malsch-Haus in Riemerling and works for the Evangelical Press Association for Bavaria, the media house of the Evangelical Church in Bavaria.

In an interview, Liepold talks about the need for an “online cemetery” and the response from the mourners.

Pastor Liepold, Catholics are decorating the graves with flower arrangements and grave candles on All Saints' Day / All Souls Day.

Is that different with you?

We remember the dead on Eternal Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent.

The bereaved are invited to the service.

A candle is lit for each deceased at the altar.

Many people go to the cemetery afterwards.

But in Bavaria, which is dominated by Catholicism, there are of course also Protestant Christians who take All Saints' Day as an opportunity to visit the cemetery.

Usually the dead are remembered in church services or privately.

Why do you need a website?

For many mourners today there is no “normal” anymore.

It is true that you have the need to cherish memories of the deceased.

But they hardly know the traditional customs anymore.

Increasing mobility also means that families no longer live together in one place.

The graves of our loved ones are often hundreds of kilometers away.

At the same time, however, we are maintaining more and more contacts via our smartphones.

We let others participate in our travels, moods and everyday experiences via the mobile phone.

Doesn't it make sense to share memories of loved ones who have passed away in this way?

And what is the added value of this pilot project?

It is an old human insight that the person who grieves needs a social network.

Today, many people expect the Internet to prove to be a social network for them.

They are used to talking about their feelings on Facebook and Instagram.

As a pastor, I am sure: Mourners need serious and contemporary digital offers!

This is also shown by the access numbers ...

How is the response?

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Pastor Rainer Liepold is a pastor in the Lore-Malsch-Haus in Riemerling.

© Jasmin Totschnig

It seems like humans would certainly benefit from this.

The “Commemorative” page has only been around since Easter, but it has already had a lot of visitors.

Most of them stay longer than a quarter of an hour, which means that you actually read the texts or even write your own texts.

There are memory pages that have been visited over 500 times.

But why does the church do this?

There are also sad pages, for example from the Münchner Merkur.

What does your online portal offer compared to non-church ones?

In our culture the cemetery used to be called "Kirchhof" because it was of course right next to the church.

Historically, the churches are therefore actually the first address that comes into question when setting up something like an online cemetery.

As a pastor, I experience: Even people who have had no contact with the church for a long time place a lot of trust in us when dealing with death and grief.

As a pastor, you often have to do with death.

Doesn't that make you unspeakably sad?

Sad?

Yes, but not wordless and helpless!

I believe in a life-affirming God who turns to us.

I believe he will carry us beyond our borders.

And at the same time I experience that people need loving accompaniment when a loved one dies.

Those who take time for mourners learn a lot of valuable things with them and from them.

I would be a more superficial and poor person if I weren't allowed to have these experiences.

What advice do you have to the people who celebrate the Sunday of the Dead?

You can take part in the service, go to the cemetery or light a virtual candle on “Commemorative”.

Whatever you do: Think about what you owe to someone who has passed away and how they have shaped you.

Often our family history is also a key that unlocks the riddles and wonders of my own life to a certain extent.

You can find more news from Hohenbrunn and the district of Munich here.