Head of the Bishops' Conference: I'm ashamed
Created: 01/21/2022, 20:52
Georg Bätzing, Chairman of the German Bishops' Conference.
© Fabian Sommer/dpa/Archive
The chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Limburg's Bishop Georg Bätzing, has promised a "relentless" clarification of the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
"Yes, sometimes I'm ashamed that we had such a past," he said on Friday evening in a service before the New Year's reception of the German Association of Journalists (DJV) in the Trier district.
Trier - "So that the world believes, that's why we have to do what happened again yesterday: relentlessly see the truth as we were in the church," said Bätzing. One must clearly see what "disastrous behavior" was done by the leadership and the leaders of the church "up to a pope emeritus". The church must "face the truth, painful as it is".
Bätzing referred to the study presented in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, according to which cases of sexual abuse in the diocese were not dealt with appropriately for decades.
The former Archbishops Friedrich Wetter and Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, have been accused of specific and personal misconduct in several cases.
The current archbishop, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, has also been accused of formal misconduct in two cases.
The experts speak of at least 497 victims and 235 alleged perpetrators, but they assume a much larger number of unreported cases.
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Bätzing said he knew that this situation weighed "outrageously" on many believers.
They would have to justify to friends and family that they still “belong to this club”.
"It has been covered up and hushed up long enough, now is the time for truth," said the head of the German Bishops' Conference.
He appealed to believers: “Don't lose heart.
We are doing what we have to do during this time.” The church must promote the fact that people might trust it again.
dpa