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Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki
Photo:
Andreas Arnold / dpa
In the beginning there was morality.
Values such as honesty, decency and justice have always been part of the brand essence of the Catholic Church.
At least in theory.
Of course, the clergy have repeatedly violated their own moral concepts in the past centuries.
Many Catholics hoped that these exceptions confirmed the rule.
Some still hope.
And, as is well known, hope dies last.
At the same time, the church is still very big in imposing its moral standards on people.
This week, Pope Francis rejected the blessing of homosexual couples.
God could "not bless sin", so the reason.
Confessing gays and lesbians also do not receive an employment contract in Catholic schools and old people's homes.
And if you are Catholic and straight, but divorced and remarried, you will not get a host at mass.
For the study on sexual violence by clerics published in the Archdiocese of Cologne, church morality initially played no role.
The legal experts studied files and protocols from the past decades.
They questioned church decision-makers and assessed the handling of cases of abuse according to laws and paragraphs.
Objective, dry and neutral.
How lawyers are like that.
Or should be.
The new report relieves Woelki
The facts are staggering.
And told quickly.
For the years 1975 to 2018, the experts were able to find indications of at least 314 victims of abuse and 202 suspects in the Archdiocese of Cologne in 236 files.
They state a total of 75 breaches of duty by church dignitaries.
Prominent clerics such as Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who died in 2017, or today's Archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Heße, are said to have not properly reported and cleared up cases of abuse.
Heße has meanwhile offered the Pope his immediate resignation.
The new report, however, exonerates the Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.
In the meantime, canon lawyers accused him of failing to report the case of an abuser to Rome in 2015, in breach of duty.
Woelki was already archbishop at that time.
He justified himself by stating that the accused Pastor O. was no longer able to be questioned because of a serious illness.
The Vatican agreed with the cardinal.
O., who died in 2017, was something like Woelki's mentor.
He is said to have molested a five-year-old at the end of the 1970s.
According to his own statements, Woelki first heard of the allegations against O. in June 2011, when he was still auxiliary bishop.
According to a memo, he “could not have imagined the allegations mentioned”.
When Woelki celebrated his appointment as cardinal in Rome the following year, O. was there.
"Systemic cover-up" in the Archdiocese
According to the standards of the abuse study that has now been published, Woelki apparently cannot prove any breach of duty.
Because in 2011, as auxiliary bishop, he was not authorized to make personnel decisions.
And later O. was then possibly too sick to prosecute his deed.
From a purely legal point of view, Woelki is obviously not to blame.
But he has another guilt.
Because Woelki's trade cannot only be assessed according to legal norms, it must also meet the high moral standards of his church.
For years Woelki was part of a clerical system in the Archdiocese of Cologne.
In this system, cases of sexual violence have repeatedly not been fully clarified and dealt with.
The abuse study calls this "systemic cover-up".
Woelki's reputation has been badly damaged in the past few months.
Thousands of believers have already withdrawn their trust in him.
The church leaving numbers in Cologne are skyrocketing.
It is difficult to imagine that the Archbishop of Cologne will in future be able to represent the morality of his church credibly to the outside world.
The eternal values like righteousness, decency, justice.
Archbishop Woelki does not live up to the declared claims of his own institution.
He should draw conclusions from the misery of abuse in Cologne - and offer the Pope his resignation.
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