Priest with a rosary (symbolic image): dismissal for sexual abuse
Photo: Jochen Lübke / dpa
According to the Diocese of Trier, a priest who has committed multiple crimes for sexual abuse has been dismissed from the clergy.
The diocese announced that Pope Francis had accepted the retired priest's request for dismissal.
There will be no further church criminal proceedings against the man because he acknowledges his guilt and wants to take moral and financial responsibility for serious crimes, it is said.
However, the diocese does not say how he will do this in concrete terms.
A SPIEGEL research last December showed the true extent of the abuse scandal in the Diocese of Trier.
Church leaders had protected suspected perpetrators in some cases.
The now dismissed priest was sentenced in 1994 by a court in Saarland to a suspended sentence for the sexual abuse of children.
Nevertheless, he remained in church service.
According to the diocese, in the late 1990s he was again guilty of sexual abuse during a pastoral assignment abroad.
Apparently, the consequences did not follow until much later: According to the information, the retired priest was only no longer allowed to perform his duties after an initial criminal procedure in the church from 2014 and was banned from contact with children and young people.
In addition, he was not allowed to leave the territory of his diocese, and his salary had been reduced.
Affected people reported
At the beginning of 2022, a preliminary investigation under canon law found "multiple, sometimes serious sexual abuse" relating to cases in the late 1970s to early 1990s.
The diocese of Trier announced that these cases only became known after reports from those affected last year.
The public prosecutor's office had been informed, but had discontinued the proceedings due to the statute of limitations.
Church criminal proceedings would have been ordered next, but the man forestalled this by asking for his release.
The dismissal that has now taken place from the clerical state means the "most extensive punishment" in canon law.
The man had worked in several positions in the diocese of Trier.
Around 1.3 million Catholics in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland belong to the Diocese of Trier.
It was only announced last Thursday that the Bishop of Trier, Stephan Ackermann, would resign from his position as abuse commissioner for the German Bishops' Conference.
He was criticized in the abuse scandal in Trier.
Most recently, because he is said to have made the real name of a victim of abuse public against her will in a Trier diocese meeting.
ptz/dpa
