WWhen Father Edward Fröhling is on the road, he is regularly stopped by strangers. Because whoever wears a yellow vest promises orientation in a high-tech world. Like Frankfurt Airport. Most people only notice at second glance that Fröhling is a religious. If you even notice the collar, the white collar on the shirt. You have already asked your question there. Then the 47-year-old priest pulls out his mobile phone and says if the flight is delayed, how to get to the gate you are looking for and where customs duties can be refunded. His evangelical colleague Bettina Klünemann knows that. “Even the house card is enough as a sign of identification, and people speak to you,” she says.
Klünemann and Fröhling are airport chaplains, a term that is now familiar. It was created 50 years ago in Frankfurt, where the airport chaplaincy is now celebrating its anniversary. In the 1960s, when planning for Terminal 1 began, a “room for the religious care of passengers” was provided there. With the opening of the terminal in 1972, the airport chaplaincy began its work, for the first time in Germany.
“Travel has a spiritual component”
The two clergymen are not only asked for advice by travelers. They also make an offer to the 81,000 employees of the largest workplace in Germany. Klünemann was a pastor at the Christ Church in Mainz and was working in emergency pastoral care when she applied for the position in 2017. “I was actually in a great situation.” Nevertheless, the airport irritated the 58-year-old theologian. “It’s just exciting to be in the middle of the working world and close to people’s working conditions.”
The request from the diocese came as a surprise to Fröhling. The 47-year-old Pallottine comes from youth and boarding school pastoral care, taught for ten years at the Vallendar Faculty of Theology and most recently worked for two and a half years in the “House of Stille” in Graz, which offers people a break for reflection. Since last December he has been experiencing the complete contrast program at Rhein-Main Airport.
“You have to like the hustle and bustle,” says Fröhling. There is no need to ask whether that applies to him: “I go through all the terminals at least once a day,” he says. This resulted in conversations that did not just revolve around flight numbers and arrival times. “Travelling has a spiritual component, many rethink their lives.” It is part of “everyday business” to give people the travel blessing – not just those with a fear of flying. The colorful hustle and bustle, it also comes to the rooms of the pastors. A few days ago, Klünemann took care of a Ukrainian who had met an Egyptian in a shelter. She wanted to marry him and go with him to Egypt, where he was deported.