GERMANY’S CATHOLIC primate, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, is under investigation over a claim he was involved in reinstating a priest with a record of child abuse.
A state prosecutor in Freiburg yesterday confirmed the case had been filed yesterday, saying it involves a priest from the Cistercian order who was suspended in 1960 after abusing children and reinstated in 1987.
The alleged victim says he was sexually abused by the priest in the 1960s in the Kloster Birnau convent school in the Freiburg diocese. He has pressed charges against Dr Zollitsch, claiming that the former personnel head of the Freiburg diocese had a hand in the priest’s reinstatement and thus had “aided and abetted” the abuse.
A spokesman for Dr Zollitsch dismissed the case as “sensational”, saying the reinstatement was a matter for the order.
A spokesman for the Freiburg state prosecutor’s office said a file had been opened against Dr Zollitsch but that the merit of the charge had yet to be examined.