INCREASING E. GERMAN HIERARCHY

THE third East German bishop
to be consecrated this year was consecrated last week in East Berlin's Corpus Christi church by Bishop Wittier of Osnabrtick. He is Bishop Schrader, auxiliary of OsnabrUck, who looks after the Catholics of the diocese who live behind the Iron Curtain in Mecklenburg.
The consecration took place in the presence of Cardinal Do pfner. Bishop of Berlin. and all the bishops ot East Germany. Two of them-Bishop SpUlbeck of Meissen and Bishop Rinteien, auxiliary bishop of Paderborn living in Magdeburg-were the co-consecrators.
The other two East German bishops to be consecrated recently were Bishop Piontek. Vicar Capitular of Breslau, who rules what remains of his see from Gorlitz on the Neisw, and Bishop Bengsch. the newly appointed auxiliary of Berlin who, unlike his ordinary, Cardinal Dopfner, has the right of entry into the Soviet Zone.
None of the West German bishops are allowed to visit those parts of their dioceses that lie behind the Iron Curtain, and the provision of auxiliary bishops living in the Soviet Zone means that the work of the Church is, in this way, less hampered than it might otherwise be. Only the district of Meiningen, cut off from the rest of the parent diocese of Wiirzburg by the Iron Curtain, now remains without a bishop of its own and is looked after by an episcopal commissar, Mgr. Joseph Sch8nauer.