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Cardinal Woelki with crook: "I have checked my conscience"
Photo: Oliver Berg / dpa
The Archdiocese of Cologne has not investigated serious allegations of abuse against the Düsseldorf pastor Johannes O., who died in 2017.
The canon lawyer from Münster, Thomas Schüller, has sharply criticized the decision apparently made in the Vatican to refrain from investigating a cover-up allegation against the Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.
»The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is grotesquely ignoring the 2010 Pope Benedict XVI.
established legal norms for dealing with sexual abuse, ”said Schüller to the“ Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger ”according to prior notification.
“In order to save Woelki, the former Pope is sacrificed, his legislation is reduced to absurdity.
This is arbitrary justice that no longer deserves the name 'law'. "
The Vatican has only seen stricter reporting requirements since 2020
According to media reports, the Vatican is not planning any canonical steps against Woelki.
Among other things, the Catholic News Agency had reported, citing those around the curia, that it was assumed that Woelki did not necessarily have to report the suspicion to Rome according to the law applicable at the time, a strict reporting obligation has only applied since 2020. "Whether it was smart "not to report the case, but was" a different question. "
Woelki had recently defended his decision not to report the suspected case.
"I have checked my conscience and I am personally of the conviction that I behaved correctly," he said in an interview with the "Kölnische Rundschau".
The Cologne criminal lawyer Björn Gercke is now to investigate this behavior in a comprehensive report.
O. had been accused of abusing a kindergarten-age boy in the late 1970s.
After Woelki became Archbishop of Cologne in 2014, he decided not to do anything else and not to report the case to Rome.
His reason for this: O. was "unable to be heard" due to advanced dementia.
Woelki is reported to have been closely associated with the pastor since he was a student and gave the eulogy at his funeral.
Two reports on the same thing
As the "Kölner Stadtanzeiger" reported, citing canon lawyer Schüller, the failure to report was a violation of papal norms, the violation of which Pope Francis recently threatened with severe sanctions.
»In 2010 Pope Benedict issued a categorical obligation for bishops to report every case of abuse to Rome.
This rule is categorical.
There is no discretion here, ”he said.
Woelki asked the Vatican himself to investigate the case in mid-December after the ongoing criticism.
In mid-March, however, the Gercke report commissioned by the Archdiocese is expected first, which will deal with a total of 236 cases of alleged abuse from the Archdiocese of Cologne.
The Archbishop of Cologne is also under pressure because of this report: Woelki withholds a paper originally commissioned by him from the Munich law firm Westphal Spilker Wastl, which was supposed to be published last year, with reference to alleged defects.
There was criticism of this decision, including among priests.
The archbishopric therefore threatened a pastor with consequences.
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