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Cologne cathedral
Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd / dpa
The repayment of a priest's debts of almost 500,000 euros by the Archdiocese of Cologne has met with sharp criticism in parts of the church.
The money for the debt repayment comes from the same church special fund from which the victims of sexual abuse would be compensated in the archdiocese, said the spokesman for the Advisory Council of the German Bishops' Conference, Johannes Norpoth, the "Kölnder Stadt-anzeiger".
But the archdiocese is much less generous with them.
Victims of sexual violence in the church have struggled for years for real recognition of their suffering, Norpoth said.
60 percent of the applicants received less than 20,000 euros.
"Victims of sex crimes, sometimes without a secure income like a priest, are fobbed off with an amount that is less than two percent of what the church was willing to pay to compensate for a priest's self-inflicted financial difficulties," he criticized .
The spokeswoman for the reform initiative Maria 2.0 Rheinland, Maria Mesrian, spoke of irresponsible financial management.
Victims of sexual abuse would be "fobbed off with ridiculous sums of money, while millions are squandered on a superfluous university or on a priest's private gambling debts," she told the newspaper.
The diocese spent even more money
According to the Archdiocese, it even paid a total of 1.15 million euros for the over-indebted priest.
The priest owed almost 500,000 euros, a spokesman for the archdiocese said on Thursday.
The archdiocese paid the debt in several tranches in order to help the clergyman in his acute emergency.
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 would also be made.
The wage tax payment plus interest, on the other hand, was paid from the archdiocese's personnel cost budget, said the spokesman.
mamk/dpa