About Kirchenbote

Kirchenbote

The Kirchenbote is the Catholic church magazine for the Diocese of Osnabrück, published in Osnabrück with a history of one hundred years. Since Easter 2024 it has appeared as a 64-page magazine every two weeks, after decades as a weekly newspaper, and together with the sister titles of the northern German church province it reaches up to 40,000 readers. Published by the Verlag Kirchenbote and embedded in the Verlagsgruppe Bistumspresse, the magazine reports on church life in the diocese, on faith and spirituality, and on social debates, with a digital home on the aussicht.online portal. From the Kirchenbote has grown the media house of the Diocese of Osnabrück, a group of seven companies at four locations with around sixty employees producing media, IT and telecommunications services, travel and books.

Overview

The Kirchenbote, affectionately known as the "Kibo", is the church magazine of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Osnabrück in Lower Saxony. It appears every fourteen days as a 64-page magazine, a format adopted at Easter 2024 when the title was transformed from a weekly newspaper into a fortnightly magazine. The relaunch shifted the editorial emphasis from retrospective event reporting to in-depth background features and spiritual guidance for a successful life, responding to the reading habits of a modern audience. The magazine is published in German and is available by subscription in print and as an e-paper.

Together with the KirchenZeitung of the Diocese of Hildesheim and the Neue Kirchenzeitung of the Archdiocese of Hamburg, the Kirchenbote forms the magazine family of the northern German church province, with a combined circulation of around 15,600 copies reaching up to 40,000 readers. The three titles share the supra-regional pages produced by the central editorial office in Osnabrück while maintaining their journalistic independence for diocesan coverage. The magazine's digital platform is aussicht.online, the "aus.sicht" portal, which carries daily updated news, background articles and multimedia content from the diocese and the wider church.

The publisher is the Verlag Kirchenbote, based at Schillerstraße 15 in Osnabrück, part of the Verlagsgruppe Bistumspresse, an association of three publishing houses producing church newspapers for eleven German dioceses. The managing director is Ulrich Waschki, who also leads the central editorial office. Advertising is handled by Osning Medien GmbH. The Kirchenbote celebrated its centenary with a series of "100 good deeds" from the media house, marking one hundred years of Catholic journalism in the Osnabrück diocese.

History

The Kirchenbote was founded a century ago, in the mid-1920s, as the church newspaper of the Diocese of Osnabrück. The 1960s were the heyday of the confessional press in Germany, and the Kirchenbote shared in it: at its peak, up to 72,000 copies were printed, with dedicated pages for several regions of the diocese. The paper documented the Second Vatican Council and its reception in the parishes, the social changes of the post-war decades and the evolving self-understanding of German Catholicism.

A milestone in the history of the church press came in 1982, when the Kirchenbote joined the existing cooperation of the church newspapers of Hildesheim, Paderborn and West Berlin. This cooperation, briefly called "Koop", was progressively expanded, and today the supra-regional pages produced in Osnabrück appear in the church newspapers of the dioceses of Hamburg, Magdeburg, Erfurt, Görlitz, Dresden-Meissen, Mainz, Limburg, Fulda, Würzburg, Munich, Eichstätt and Speyer, while the diocesan newspapers of Aachen and Münster are also supplied. The Verlagsgruppe Bistumspresse, founded as the institutional framework of this cooperation, unites the Bernward Mediengesellschaft of Hildesheim, the St. Benno publishing company of Leipzig and the Verlag Kirchenbote of Osnabrück.

The most recent transformation came at Easter 2024, when the Kirchenbote changed from a weekly newspaper into a fortnightly 64-page magazine. The relaunch was presented as a response to changed media use: fewer, deeper, more beautifully designed issues instead of weekly news coverage. Alongside the print relaunch, the social media activities and the aussicht.online homepage were expanded. From the newspaper founded a hundred years ago has grown the Medienhaus of the Diocese of Osnabrück, encompassing seven companies at four locations with around sixty employees, active in media production, IT and telecommunications services, travel and book publishing.

Content and Sections

The content of the Kirchenbote as a fortnightly magazine is built around background reporting, faith and spirituality, and the life of the diocese. Cover stories address the major themes of church and society: the abuse crisis and its consequences, the future of parish structures, migration and integration, social justice, and the spiritual questions of contemporary life. The magazine's reporting on the 2025/2026 study on spiritual abuse in the dioceses of Osnabrück and Münster, and its critical questioning of church leadership, demonstrate a journalism that does not shy away from uncomfortable topics within its own institution.

Diocesan reporting covers church celebrations, social projects, cultural events and the work of parishes and church institutions across the diocese, from the city of Osnabrück to the Emsland and East Frisia. Interviews and opinion pieces give space to bishops, theologians, politicians and committed Catholics, while portraits introduce people whose faith shapes their lives and work. Service and advice features offer spiritual guidance for everyday life, interpretations of faith questions and practical help for church involvement.

The supra-regional pages, shared with the sister titles of the Verlagsgruppe Bistumspresse, bring reports from the universal church, the Vatican and the German church as a whole, as well as the fortnightly magazine's cultural and lifestyle content. The aussicht.online portal extends the magazine with daily news, photo galleries and video, while the social media channels carry the brand's journalism to younger audiences. The overall editorial concept aims to be a companion for a successful life in faith, combining journalistic depth with spiritual orientation.

Publisher and Organization

The Kirchenbote is published by the Verlag Kirchenbote, based at Schillerstraße 15, 49074 Osnabrück. The publishing house is part of the Verlagsgruppe Bistumspresse, a GmbH based in Osnabrück that unites three publishers producing church newspapers for eleven German dioceses. The shareholders of the group are the Bernward Mediengesellschaft mbH of Hildesheim, the St. Benno Buch- und Zeitschriftenverlagsgesellschaft of Leipzig and the Verlag Kirchenbote of Osnabrück. The group's management consists of Thomas Hagenhoff and Ulrich Waschki, with Waschki also leading the central editorial office that produces the supra-regional content in Osnabrück.

The magazine appears every fourteen days in German as a 64-page magazine, available by subscription in print and as an e-paper. Advertising sales are handled by Osning Medien GmbH of Georgsmarienhütte. The fifteen church newspapers of the Verlagsgruppe Bistumspresse, including the four external publishers that take over the magazine's cover section, had a combined fortnightly circulation of around 100,000 copies in 2024. The Kirchenbote itself, together with its northern German sister titles, accounts for around 15,600 copies of that total.

Digital Presence

The digital home of the Kirchenbote is aussicht.online, the "aus.sicht" portal of the Osnabrück diocesan media house. The site carries daily updated news from the diocese, background articles, interviews and multimedia content, extending the fortnightly magazine into continuous digital publishing. The portal serves all three northern German titles, with dedicated sections for the Kirchenbote of Osnabrück, the KirchenZeitung of Hildesheim and the Neue Kirchenzeitung of Hamburg, each maintaining its diocesan identity online.

The brand is active on social media, where the editorial team shares news, faith impulses and behind-the-scenes content, reaching audiences that no longer read print church papers. An e-paper edition makes the magazine available digitally to subscribers. For the Medienhaus of the Diocese of Osnabrück, the digital channels are part of a diversified media business that also includes IT and telecommunications services, travel offers and book publishing. In a diocesan press landscape under economic pressure, the Kirchenbote's combination of a relaunched print magazine, a daily updated portal and active social media represents the group's strategy for keeping Catholic journalism in the region viable for its second century.