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	German Bishops Apologize for Sex-abuse Cases As Scandal Spreads By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Tony Czuczka Business Week February 22, 2010 http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-22/german-bishops-apologize-for-sex-abuse-cases-as-scandal-spreads.html Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The head of Germany’s Catholic bishops apologized to victims of rape and molestation by priests dating back at least to the 1970s, echoing Pope Benedict XVI’s recent words of condemnation. “Sexual abuse of minors is always a heinous crime,” Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops’ Conference, told a news conference today in Freiburg, Germany. “I support this wording by Pope Benedict out of a deep conviction and apologize to all victims of such crimes.” Benedict is struggling to contain the damage to the Vatican’s reputation from European sex-abuse scandals that began in Ireland and have spread to his German homeland. On Feb. 16, he called repeated instances of sexual abuse a “heinous crime” after summoning Irish bishops to Rome. Germany’s Roman Catholic bishops are discussing possible changes to anti-abuse guidelines in effect since 2000 and ways to prevent future abuse at a meeting that began in Freiburg today. Even so, the guidelines “have worked” and are designed to ensure cooperation with prosecutors in abuse cases, Zollitsch said. At least 115 people have come forward since January saying they were abused at schools run by Jesuits in Germany, Ursula Raue, a lawyer appointed by the order to investigate the cases, Said on Feb. 18, according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Most cases occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, she said. Under Fire Abuse was first reported by Canisius-Kolleg, a Jesuit-run high school in Berlin. While the school principal mentioned allegations of abuse by former students to Jesuit leaders in Germany in 2006, he said at the time that they didn’t want to go public, according to a Jan. 30 statement by Stefan Dartmann, the order’s head in Germany, on the school Web site. The pope so far has taken no direct action to quell public indignation about the sexual abuse in Germany. He has already drawn fire for being slow to respond to Irish investigations last year that documented “endemic” abuse of children since the 1930s by priests in Ireland. The pope waited for more than two weeks to react officially to a November judiciary report that said the Irish hierarchy was more concerned with avoiding scandal than protecting children. The pope has drafted an open letter to Irish Catholics that “will be issued during the coming season of Lent,” the Vatican said. Four Irish bishops have tendered their resignations over the scandal. Benedict, leader of more than a billion Catholics, has made some efforts to deal with child-abuse scandals since he became pope in April 2005. He visited the U.S. and Australia for the first time in 2008 and apologized to victims of abuse, becoming the first pontiff to do so. --Editors: Jennifer Freedman, Julian Nundy To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in Rome at fjackson@bloomberg.net; fjackson@bloomberg.net; Tony Czuczka in Berlin at +49-30-70010-6227 or aczuczka@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at +33-1-5365-5075 or jhertling@bloomberg.net
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