Greetings, my dear! Look! Finally, our St. Peter's Church has a real bell tower. Only now, in 1903, is our church, as a part of the city skyline, a real counterpart to the Alexander Church. But it was a long way till then. I, Pastor Beerens, have struggled for a long time with the fact that I am not allowed to read the mass in the beautiful old Alexander Church and that the service there is reserved for my evangelical spiritual brother Pastor Bulling. But if history had only gone a little differently, we Catholics would have remained the masters of the old Alexanderstift. The tragic split in our church begins in the 16th century. At that time, Wildeshausen was under the rule of the Prince Bishop of Münster. And he, of all people -almost unbelievable - introduced the Reformation in Wildeshausen! The bishop probably thought about converting his dominion into a secular duchy. It didn't get that far, but we Catholics in Wildeshausen remained a minority for a long time. Only at the beginning of the 17th century the Catholic Church went over to the Counter-Reformation. And in this act, Wildeshausen was largely re-catholicized. However, this happened in politically uncertain times. During the Thirty Years' War, Wildeshausen was repeatedly occupied by foreign troops, sometimes by Protestants, sometimes by Catholics, but nobody was able to hold on here until the Swedes came to stay towards the end of the war. And the Swedes were Protestants. When they established their rule in Wildeshausen, the catholic mass in the Alexander Church was over. All that was left of ancient crockery and ornaments for the Catholic rite in the church was removed and has been lost ever since. What as loss! The canons first moved to Visbek and then to Vechta, where they also took the remaining arm reliquaries of Saint Alexander with them. At least in private spaces we were allowed to hold our services and we were allowed to run our own Catholic school. In 1699 the Catholic community bought a house with a stable, where the first Catholic chapel was built. When Wildeshausen went under the reign of Hanover in the 18th century, Protestant dominance first manifested itself once again. Children who went to the Catholic school also had to pay school fees to the Protestant schoolmaster. Also, no Catholic clergymen were allowed to perform official acts such as marriages or baptisms. Only at the beginning of the 19th century when Wildeshausen went under the reign of Oldenburg, conditions improved significantly. We even got our own church. In 1824 the time had finally come and we were able to celebrate the first service in our newly built St. Peter's Church. And now that we have also received this stately tower, we have finally achieved equality!