The head of the German Bishops Conference apologised today for incidents of sexual abuse by a Roman Catholic priest two decades ago in the Freiburg diocese.
Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, who was in charge of human resourcesand staffing in the diocese at the time, said in a statement on the diocese’s website: “I apologise to the victims in the name of the diocese and ask for forgiveness.”
An anonymous letter from an abuse victim which was published by several German newspapers said Dr Zollitsch had covered up sexual abuse by a priest in the Black Forest community of Oberharmersbach in the 1980s and ‘90s.
The church rejected the charge but the senior cleric wrote in his statement that “today, in my responsibility as archbishop... I would act more forcefully and be more insistent in my search for witnesses and victims”.
The daily newspaper Badische Zeitung said it had obtained an anonymous letter addressed to the Archbishop claiming he refused to contact the authorities about the accusations against the parish priest from Oberharmersbach, identified as Franz B.
The letter itself was not published by the newspaper and its authenticity could not immediately be confirmed.
In a statement on its website, the Freiburg diocese said initial rumours in 1991 about the priest’s “immoral contact with children” could not be substantiated at the time.
Dr Zollitsch ordered the priest into early retirement that same year and told him to stay away from children, the paper reported.
In 1995, an abuse victim contacted the diocese. When the church confronted the priest with the accusations, saying it would inform prosecutors, the suspect committed suicide, the diocese statement said.
The church then called on potential victims to contact a therapist for help and 17 people came forward, it said.
“However, suggestions that the abuse in Oberharmersbach was covered up and the priest was only transferred, is simply an attempt to be part of the current trend of church bashing,” Vicar-General Fridolin Keck from Freiburg said in the diocese’s statement.
Public television station SWR said that a victim, now 38, whose identity it did not reveal, told the station about sexual abuse by Franz B. The man said he was sexually abused from the age of 11 to 17 and that the abuse included “hard-core sex,” the station wrote in a press release. The report will air on German TV on Monday.
Pope Benedict XVI was archbishop of Munich in the 1980s, and he approved therapy for a priest suspected of molesting boys. The priest was then transferred to a job where he later abused more children. He was convicted in a criminal trial.
The diocese has said then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger knew about the transfer but not about the priest’s continued work in Bavarian congregations after he assumed his duties at the Vatican.
The Pope rebuked Irish bishops today for “grave errors of judgment” in handling clerical sex abuse cases in that country and ordered an investigation into the Irish church. But he laid no blame for the problem on the Vatican’s policies of keeping such cases secret.
AP