According to abuse reports: flood of church exits throughout Bavaria - hundreds of Munich residents are taking consequences

Created: 01/27/2022, 08:47

The abuse report for the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising shook the Catholic Church.

A wave of church resignations is rolling towards the Bavarian municipalities.

Munich – After the presentation of a report on sexual violence against children and young people* in the Catholic Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, registry offices in Bavaria have to prepare for a flood of church exits.

According to the district administration department (KVR), around 650 appointments for people to leave the church have been booked in Munich alone since the report was published last Thursday.

That is significantly more than twice as many as would normally have been expected, as a KVR spokesman said.

According to reports on abuse in the Catholic Church: Cities in Bavaria are preparing for a flood of church exits

In order to cope with this flood, the registry office extends its opening hours and employs two additional employees for people leaving the church.

Overall, the capacity will even be tripled “through shifting”, but even that will probably not be enough.

The KVR therefore points out that leaving the church can also be submitted in writing - if the signature is notarized.

The cities of Regensburg*, Ingolstadt and Würzburg are also reacting and expanding their capacities.

In Würzburg, 22 additional appointments per week are to be offered from February 1st.

Since Thursday, 50 requests have been received there about leaving the church - five times as many as in the same period in 2021. A total of 109 people left the church there this year.

70 of them were Catholic.

In Ingolstadt* all dates for leaving the church are fully booked until mid-March.

However, the demand is so great that "the registry office will foreseeably create additional appointment capacities," as a spokesman said.

In Regensburg, the registry office wants to “expand the range of appointments” from February.

Bavaria: After the abuse scandal, significantly more people left the church than in the previous year

A somber chapter in the history of the Church is highlighted in a sensational report on abuse presented on Thursday.

Parts of it deal with the transfer of the pedophile Pastor H. to Bad Tölz in 2008. Pastor H. was announced as a "good man" in Tölz Pastor H.: "The church made mistakes in dealing with me" © dpa

Not far from Munich*, in Ebersberg, where the district court sentenced a priest for sexual abuse at the end of the 1980s before he was reinstated in another parish and relapsed there again, the number of resignations increased in the first few weeks of the year almost doubled: by January 26, 2021 there were 17, this year there are already 31, according to the city.

According to a city spokesman, 21 people have left the church in Bamberg* since January 21, the day after the study was presented, 17 of them Catholics.

In total, there have already been 83 exits there in January 2022, 71 of them Catholic.

"This is also significantly more than in previous years," said the spokesman.

In Nuremberg* appointments must be booked two weeks in advance.

Anyone leaving the church there this week has booked the appointment before the report is presented.

So far this year, the total number of Catholics and Protestants leaving the church there is 371. That is 73 percent more than last year as of January 25.

(By the way: Our Bayern newsletter informs you about all the important stories from Bavaria. Register here.)

Abuse report by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising: Cases in the diocese not dealt with appropriately

The report by the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW), commissioned by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising itself, comes to the conclusion that cases of sexual abuse in the diocese have not been dealt with appropriately for decades.

The city of Freising now wants to withdraw honorary citizenship from the former Pope Benedict*.

It accuses the cardinals and former archbishops Friedrich Wetter and Joseph Ratzinger as well as the current one, Reinhard Marx, of misconduct.

The experts speak of at least 497 victims and 235 suspected perpetrators, but assume a significantly larger number of unreported cases.

In the Munich region, as in the Munich district, the church representatives are shocked* by the extent of the abuse report.