Football lover Jens died from a brain tumor but before he passed, he asked his parents to have his gravestone feature his favourite team.
Last Christmas he was delighted to meet Dortmund’s coach Juergen Klopp in hospital and days before he died in May, the team clinched the Bundesliga title.
“Mummy, when I die, I would like a gravestone with the club logo,” Pascal’s mother, Nicole Schmidt, told Bild daily.
However, when she approached the Church of Maria Heimsuchung in Dortmund, they refused to erect a stone engraved with the club’s logo and a soccer ball on top. They argued it broke the rules which ban non-Christian inscriptions and images.
Football fans in Germany flooded a Facebook page for The Last Wish of Jens Pascal with angry messages.
They included: “It is outrageous” and “I ask the Church not to be led by regulations, show us your heart!”
The church has issued a statement saying they’d come to a compromise.
The gravestone could have a ball but on the ground, not the top, and it must also have a Christian symbol, such as a dove.
“It was never the intention of the church to stand in the way of the little boy’s last wish,” the statement read. “It was about reconciling the interests of the Church community, the cemetery rules and the interests of the parents of the child who died.”
Images via Facebook and Getty
