For weeks now, thousands of Germans have taken to the streets in a public display of their opposition to the U.S.-led conflict against Iraq. Students have skipped school, protesters have blocked American military facilities, and speakers have shouted out the rallying cry: "No War."

At the same time, the opposition has also been working its way through German society in a quiet, private way, as citizens mull the moral implications of the conflict.

Beate Schmidt is one such German, and on a recent Saturday, she sought out the solitude of a church in the western city of Saarbrücken where she could pray for peace.

"I rarely go to church, but I just have the urge to go today," Schmidt told Germany's protestant news agency EPD.

Many Germans are making similar decisions. Last year alone, the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany lost about 440,000 members. But faced with the violence of war in Iraq, they are coming back, the news agency reported. "Prayer is the only thing that matters now," said Cardinal Joachim Meisner (photo).

With the war under way, many churches are offering midday prayer and meditation sessions as a way for Germans to pray and register a peaceful protest against the war. At the weekly midday prayer service at Munich's St. Matthäus Church, the response has been large. "More and more people are coming since the outbreak of war," the church's priest, Dieter Kuller, told EPD.

The lunchtime service is used mainly by busy workers who wouldn't otherwise have the time to go to church, Kuller said. Many acknowledged that they only went to church at Christmas, but since the war broke out, they said they had been feeling unsure and wanted to speak to God about it, he said.

In Stuttgart, church officials are offering similar extra services. Every Wednesday at 6 p.m., the Stiftskirche has begun to hold a prayer for peace service. And the church's priest, Father Manfried Bittighofer, said the number of churchgoers had risen there, too.

But Bittighofer offered one word of caution about the change. Increased attendance of church in times of war is not a particularly new phenomenon. "It's traditional," he told DW-WORLD. "Whenever there is war, we invite people to pray for peace."

Catholics and Protestants unified

Both the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany are unified in their opposition to the war. In a joint statement published as hostilities began last week, the churches' leaders said the use of force against the Baghdad regime was "not justified." The statement was signed by the head of the Catholic Church in Germany, Cardinal Karl Lehman; his Protestant counterpart, Manfred Kock; and the chairman of Christian Church Working Group, Bishop Walter Klaiber.

"There is no doubt that we share the political values that are practiced in the U.S.A. and Great Britain," their statement said. "But we have to oppose the course of blood letting they have chosen to take."

Echoing the statement, Cardinals Friedrich Wetter of Munich and Meisner of Cologne called on Christians in Germany to pray for peace, saying they hoped that the war would be as swift as possible. "Our thoughts must now be with those who are facing death and who are forced to flee," they said.

In doing so, they have continued to express the moral doubts about the conflict raised by Pope John Paul II, who has campaigned vigorously against an Iraq war for months. It is a stance he emphasized again over the weekend, when he said the conflict threatened the whole of humanity and maintained that "weapons would never resolve the problems of man."