Activities

- The ZöFra is a self-help group for women who find themselves in a difficult situation of their love affair with a priest or women who are still suffering from the aftermath of their relation. Because these relations were often kept secret for a long time, women are happy to be able to talk to each other in a safe and protected environment.

- It is then possible to encourage them to put an end to their silence and loneliness, to break down their fears and feelings of guilt, so that they can allow a new self-awareness to grow and, maybe, so that they can find solutions to master their difficult life situation.

- This action is directed toward the public, on the one hand, with the aim to make known the issue of the celibacy of priests to the largest audience and, on the other hand, to makers, so that human solutions can be found for couples who infringed the vows of celibacy and who then lose any subsistence base (all the more because many women were working for the church) as soon as they publicly stand up for their relationship.

- The ZöFra is especially keen to keep an eye on the legal field. As, for understandable reasons most of the women concerned have to stay off the public life (and, therefore, cannot go to public offices and advice centres, for example), they are always really afraid to try and find out what options they have. And if their life situation is difficult on top of that, from the emotional point of view, they often lack the courage to make legal arrangements.

- The ZöFra would like the priests to be able to freely chose whether they want to take the vows of celibacy or not in the long run and is devoted to smooth away the ambiguity of the clerical hierarchy.

- The ZöFra mediates Addresses of competent professionals such as psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, career counsellors and career advisors.

We have a media library with documents, books, films, articles about celibacy and love.