Name coding, camouflage addresses, cheques: Bishop protected abusers from prosecution

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The late Latin American Bishop Emil Stehle, also known as Emilio Lorenzo

Photo: Harald Oppitz / KNA

Emil Stehle was the first Catholic Bishop of Santo Domingo in Ecuador.

A man with an impressive CV, for whom the city erected a larger-than-life monument: the image of a benevolently smiling shepherd, his hand raised in blessing.

Born in Mühlhausen in 1926, first a soldier at the front and a prisoner of war, then a priest in the Archdiocese of Freiburg, Stehle became an advisor to Pope John Paul II because of his Latin America expertise. Because he was committed to the peace process in El Salvador, he received a Federal Cross of Merit in 1986.

He was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

But the reputation of the clergyman who died in 2017 has suffered badly.

For some time there have been allegations of abuse and cover-up against the busy bishop.

An investigation commissioned by the German Bishops' Conference has now confirmed that Stehle helped three priests in the 1970s to evade pending criminal proceedings in Germany.

In two cases, the priests were wanted for child abuse, in one case the allegation was not found in the files.

With the help of name coding, camouflage addresses and maintenance support by check, Stehle ensured that the men could remain undercover in Latin America.

More casualties and cover-ups likely

But Stehle is also said to have sexually assaulted himself: According to the report, he is associated with 16 reports of sexual offenses.

He is said to have committed the crimes during his time as a priest in Bogotá in Colombia, as Adveniate managing director in Essen and later as auxiliary bishop and then bishop of Santo Domingo in Ecuador.

In Santo Domingo, he was considered a “patter”, is said to have had a relationship and behaved in a way that violated boundaries with young women.

"We assume that there were other victims at Stehle's sites and possibly also attempts to cover it up," says the author of the study, Bettina Janssen.

For her report, the lawyer analyzed files from the Fidei Donum (»Gift of Faith«) coordination office.

Since the 1960s, Fidei Donum has sent around 400 priests to various Latin American countries.

Since 1973, the coordination office had been based at the Adveniat aid organization.

The suspicion of a cover-up, which has now been confirmed, casts a long shadow over both institutions.

"Constructs like Fidei Donum must be fundamentally put to the test," Cologne lawyer Janssen told SPIEGEL.

This network was completely without structure.

“The priests had almost no liabilities and some didn't even have assignment contracts.

Nevertheless, they were financially supported by the church.« The connections to the church authorities in Germany were often loose, according to the report, in one case there was no contact between the priest and the coordination center for 34 years.

As so often in the Catholic Church, there seems to have been a lack of control and transparency.

Inconvenient clergymen deported

In his encyclical Fidei Donum, Pope Pius XII.

In 1957 the European bishops were asked to send clergymen from the dioceses to face the shortage of priests in the developing countries.

Also for the sake of the Christian mission.

The fact that priests who had come from Europe had abuse and criminal behavior in their luggage was repeatedly the subject of reports.

But evidence was often lacking.

The politically unstable and sometimes undemocratic societies of Latin America offered ideal shelter for criminals who wanted to evade the investigating authorities.

The unmasking of Bishop Stehle as the perpetrator shows pars pro toto that there was probably a kind of deportation practice for decades.

At the same time, the Catholic Church repeatedly got unwelcome, uncomfortable but above all dangerous clerics out of the line of fire by relocating them to developing countries.

Even in Germany, the ranks held, the church omertà was almost complete until the first major scandals were uncovered in 2010.

All the more so in arch-Catholic countries.

"In the countries of Latin America, sexual offenses are taboo in the church, a stigma, there the fear of revelations is even greater," says lawyer Janssen.

For this reason alone, one must expect that there will be other victims on site among nurses, interns or indigenous helpers.

Minutes and conversations with current and former Adveniat employees were included in the investigation, as well as 474 so-called accompanying personnel files and letters exchanged between Fidei Donum and the dioceses.

The results of the abuse report from the Diocese of Hildesheim from September 2021 were also included.

After its publication, eight women affected by abuse had reported.

The reports speak of forced kisses and touching all over the body.

A woman suspects that Emil Stehle not only baptized her, but also fathered her, since he had an affair with her mother.

According to the investigation, Stehle's paternity cannot be completely ruled out.

The woman concerned also reported that Stehle had asked her to undress and "groped" her.

What the bishop doesn't know...

One of the authors of the Hildesheim abuse study, the former Lower Saxony Justice Minister Antje Niewisch-Lennartz, has long suspected a system behind the deportations of conspicuous priests to Latin America.

In December she wrote an open letter to the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Georg Bätzing.

She quotes from a letter from the "Fidei Donum" coordination office to the Bishop of Hildesheim at the time, Heinrich-Maria Janssen, who was later also suspected of abuse, dated May 6, 1976 not only in another diocese, but also in another country".

It is assumed "that you agree if I do not inform you of this new location and you can therefore not provide any information to third parties," it continues.

The aid organization Adveniat has declared its willingness to pay for the monthly support, "so that such help on your part could be omitted and this problem should also be solved".

One looked for fast solutions over short official channels, that's how this letter works.

The managing director at the time, Emil Stehle, signed the contract.

For ex-Minister Niewisch-Lennartz, the diction of the letter is a clear indication "that the procedure chosen here to avoid criminal prosecution of the accused priest is not an exceptional individual case".

And now?

The German Bishops' Conference, in cooperation with Adveniat, now wants to discuss a restructuring of the Fidei Donum coordination office.

“A comprehensive selection and aptitude process will be essential,” it says.

In the future, applicants for posts abroad should provide proof that they have never been sexually assaultive and have completed prevention training.

A kind of certificate of good conduct, not exactly a revolutionary innovation.

"Adveniat takes the position of absolute zero tolerance towards the crime of sexual abuse and - also with this ruthless investigation - stands by the side of those affected in Germany and Latin America," says Father Martin Maier, head of the Fidei Donum coordination office Submit request.

Standing to the side, a beautiful picture.

But who is going to find the alleged other victims in Latin America?

Who compensates them?

Who evaluates improvements?

And who controls the behavior of the Catholic priests far away from the German dioceses?

As always, there are more declarations of intent and questions than answers and actions that emerge.

The question of who else knew of Stehle's alleged misdeeds and turned a blind eye also remains unanswered.

According to Janssen's investigation, an affected person contacted the German Bishops' Conference as early as November 2005.

She informed Cardinal Karl Lehmann and Archbishop Robert Zollitsch in writing about sexual assaults by Emil Stehle.

According to the woman, he "admitted to the crimes with his written confession of guilt and payment of compensation for pain and suffering."

'Dumping with alcohol when the victim refused was his method, not violence.

Probably the reason why there was never an official report of further victims.« Lehmann and Zollitsch apparently did not react either.

In their current statement, DBK and Adveniat emphasize that no donations were used to support the Fidei Donum priests.

That will hardly reassure the believers, who are already on the brink after endless abuse scandals.