Divine Intervention

Ernst-Ewald Roth certainly showed that he was serious about his political aspirations when he announced his intention to run for the office of mayor of Wiesbaden, the capital of the central German state of Hesse.

Since a Catholic priest isn't allowed to meddle in politics (at least officially), the 53-year-old had to step down from his post as the city's highest-ranking Catholic priest, relying on a welfare salary from his church to get by while he was hoping to claim city hall come March 13.

Wiesbaden's Social Democrats (SPD) nominated Roth, who is not a party member, for the post and posters went up around town to tell voters that the cleric was the best choice to run the wealthy but sleepy town of some 275,000 people that's located just west of Frankfurt.

Everything seemed to be going just fine -- until someone noticed that SPD campaign officials had missed a fairly important deadline last Thursday. No one had filed Roth's nomination with the civic election commission -- bad news since that meant that he could no longer run in the election.

"I'm deeply disappointed," Roth told voters on his Web site. He added that he wants to continue to work for the folks that have supported him during his campaign.

The leaders of the local SPD chapter have since resigned.

"The mistakes that can be made in this world will be made," said Kurt Beck, the national SPD leader, who serves as premier of the neighboring state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

The party's general secretary, Hubertus Heil, put it more bluntly.

"Shit happens," he told reporters.