Pope Francis rejected the resignation of German Cardinal Reinhard Marx from his post as Archbishop of Munich, in a letter published Thursday in which he thanked him "
for his courage
" in the face of the sexual abuse crisis.
Read also: Pedophilia: Pope Francis hardens canon law
"
Continue as you propose, but as Archbishop of Munich
", wrote the Pope to the German cardinal, who had announced on Friday that he had asked to be relieved of his functions because of the "
failure
" of the German Catholic Church in the face of “
The catastrophe of sexual abuse
”. “
Dear brother, Thank you for your courage. It is a Christian courage (...) which is not afraid of being humiliated in the face of the terrible reality of sin,
”comments the Pope in this letter published in German and Spanish. “
Taking up the crisis, personally and in community, is the only fruitful way
,” adds François. For him, the whole "
Church is in crisis because of the abuse affair
" and "
the ostrich policy leads nowhere
”.
The Archbishop of Munich, former president of the German Episcopal Conference, had addressed a resignation request to the Pope on May 21. "
For me, it is essentially a question of sharing the responsibility for the catastrophe of sexual abuse committed by Church leaders over the past decades,
" he wrote to the Pope, denouncing an "
institutional failure or systemic
”in the vast scandal which also splashes the German Catholic Church. This request for Reinhard Marx's resignation came after Pope Francis ordered an investigation at the end of May into the handling of cases of sexual assault of minors in the diocese of Cologne, the largest in Germany, shaken by a serious crisis for several decades. month.
The pope thus appointed two “
apostolic visitors
”, extraordinary papal envoys, charged with “
apprehending the complex pastoral situation in the archbishopric and at the same time studying possible faults
” of Cardinal Rainer-Maria Woelki and other prelates of the diocese. Cardinal Woelki, a conservative in the ranks of the Church, is accused in particular of having long covered two priests of the religious community of Dusseldorf suspected of sexual violence.
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