Another child sex abuse scandal hits Germany's Catholic Church

Idafe Martin

02/17/2021 6:01 AM

• Clarín.com

• World

Updated 02/17/2021 6:01 AM

"The gravest crisis" in the history of the German Catholic Church.

So try diaries

Germany

the scandal caused by the refusal of the archbishop of Cologne, Rainer Maria Woelki, published a report on

child sexual abuse

committed by members of his diocese between 1975 and 2018.

The diocese of Cologne is the largest and richest in Germany, one of the European countries with an opulent Catholic Church.

Woelki

is rained down by criticism

and his chair moves.

The Diocesan Council of Cologne, in which religious and lay authorities sit, decided at the end of January that the archbishop no longer has their trust.

“The way in which (Woelki) behaves at the head of the archbishopric is incredible, especially at the moment when our Church is going through the most serious crisis in its history.

As a moral authority, the archbishopric of Cologne has seriously failed ”, launched the president of the Diocesan Council, the Social Democratic mayor of Solingen -in the same lander as Cologne-, Tim Kurzbach.

That withdrawal of confidence came about because

Woelki decided he would not publish the report,

which had been drawn up by a Munich law office.

The archbishop considers that the document has "serious methodological flaws", but it was done in the same way as others about other dioceses that were already published without anyone questioning the quality of the research and the methodology used for its writing.

A protest by an NGO that claims justice for sexual abuse committed by Catholic religious around the world, in February 2019 at the Vatican.

Photo: AP

Accused of cover-up

Woelki is also accused of not having denounced before the Common Justice or communicated to the Vatican the case of a parish priest from Düsseldorf who for decades, at least between 1971 and 1996, abused minors of both sexes.

Woelki

would have been aware of these abuses for years and would not have opened his mouth

to denounce the priest.

Angela Merkel's government has already begun to take action on the matter.

Johannes-Wilhelm Röring, his person in charge of monitoring the issues of sexual abuse committed against minors, said that the archbishop's behavior "discredits the work of introspection to which the Catholic Church as a whole has undertaken."   

Criticisms of Woelki come from the top of the German Catholic hierarchy

.

The Cardinal Archbishop of Munich, Reinhard Marx told the

Augsburger Allgemeine

newspaper last week

that “the consequences of this scandal are extremely negative for everyone.

For the Catholic Church the damage is considerable ”.

The Archbishop of Munich, Reinhard Marx, a close associate of the pope, harshly criticized his Cologne counterpart, Rainer Maria Woelki.

Photo: AP

Marx also said that he would not prevent the forthcoming publication of a similar report, on his diocese of Munich, for sexual abuse of minors committed between 1945 and 2019.

Reinhard Marx is one of the European cardinals most likely to one day succeed Pope Francis to the throne of the Vatican and was president of the German Bishops' Conference between 2014 and 2020.

Renovation plans

The Woelki scandal weakens the German Catholic Church,

which after years of sex scandals tried to raise its head with the pandemic.

In various forums, the German bishops and archbishops have discussed

profound reforms

of their internal organization, to the point of proposing that all their parish priests and bishops be democratically elected by the whole of the faithful.

Also important administrative and economic reforms to make its economic management more transparent and modern.

The German bishops –in conjunction with associations of the faithful-

have also discussed the celibacy of parish priests and the place of women

in religious celebrations and in the structures and hierarchies of the Catholic Church.

But sexual abuse cases continue to hamper his strategy for change, and behaviors like Woelki's discredit the sincerity of the promised change.

Woelki, 64, acknowledges mistakes and says he will assume his responsibilities but has no intention of publishing a report that could include the names of dozens of parish priests who sexually abused minors for decades.

And he promises the publication of another document, commissioned by himself from another law firm, this time not from Munich, but from his city, Cologne.

The German Catholic Church loses its faithful by spurt.

In 2019 alone, according to various media, 272,000 people stopped checking the box of the Catholic Church on their tax return.

Germans freely decide where 5-10% of their taxes go by checking a box for some denomination or cultural organization.

This formula has made the German Catholic Church the richest in Europe, but the loss of the faithful can leave it without resources.

Brussels, special

CB

Look also

Millions of Dollars in Public Funds: How America's Catholic Church Made a Fortune Amid the Pandemic

Sex change in the Church: Germany maximizes the debate over "women priests", the biggest change in two thousand years