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The Cologne Cathedral
Photo: Christoph Hardt / imago images/Future Image
The Archdiocese of Cologne paid a total of 1.15 million euros for an over-indebted priest.
The priest owed almost 500,000 euros, said a spokesman for the archdiocese.
The "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger" had previously reported on it.
The archdiocese paid the debt in several tranches to help the clergyman in his acute emergency, the spokesman said.
After intensive tax law reviews, it was then concluded that these donations were taxable.
The subsequent taxation, including interest, then cost the Archdiocese another almost 650,000 euros.
Some of the funds were taken from a special fund from which payments to victims of sexual abuse are also made.
The wage tax payment plus interest, on the other hand, was paid from the archdiocese's personnel cost budget, said the spokesman.
"Frightening ignorance or ignorance"
The archdiocese's supervisory and control bodies were not involved in the use of funds from the special fund.
However, this was not necessary, the spokesman emphasized.
In this case, the Archdiocese was able to dispose of it itself.
The Münster canon lawyer Thomas Schüller contradicts this.
"The information from the Archdiocese shows a frightening lack of knowledge or ignorance of the relevant property law provisions," Schüller told the "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger".
The Archdiocese in Cologne has been under criticism for a long time.
The Archbishop of Cologne, Rainer Maria Woelki, triggered a crisis of confidence in 2020 when he decided not to publish an expert opinion from the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl law firm on how diocese officials dealt with allegations of sexual abuse.
He cited legal reasons for doing so.
After that, the relationship between the cardinal, who was considered to be as conservative as he was reserved, and the bodies of the archdiocese continued to deteriorate.
The number of people leaving the church in Cologne rose sharply.
bam/dpa
