BishopAccountability.org
	Germany's Catholic Church Calls for New Beginning at Easter: Summary Earth Times April 3, 2010 http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/316993,germanys-catholic-church-calls-for-new-beginning-at-easter--summary.html GERMANY -- Germany's Catholic church used Easter sermons to call for a new beginning on Saturday, after being shaken in the past months by revelations of widespread sexual child abuse by clerics. Hamburg's auxiliary bishop Hans-Joachim Jaschke said a "bad shadow" had fallen over the church, but added, "we must see what potential we have, what strengths we have and how a new beginning is possible." Germany's Catholic church has been hard hit as more than 250 cases of abuse by clergy have emerged in recent months, dating back as far as the 1950s. The implications have reached as far as the Vatican, where Pope Benedict XVI has been accused of being involved in attempts to cover up abuse cases to avoid shaming the church when he had been archbishop of Munich. Other cases of abuse were also surfacing in Evangelical church institutions as well as state-run childcare facilities in former East Germany. The Archbishops of Munich and Bamberg demanded more individual accountability, and saw the abuse scandal as the consequence of a broader loss of values and responsibility amongst people. Munich's Archbishop Reinhard Marx said this was the root cause of the current crisis in the economy, in society and the church, in remarks prepared for an Easter sermon later later in the day. "The current church crisis is a crisis of our society, which has lost its values, ethics and morals in many areas," the Archbishop of Bamberg, Ludwig Schick, was later due to tell his congregation. The archdiocese of Freiburg, in south-western Germany, has alone counted accusations against 31 clerics. In 16 cases, the alleged victims were abused by more than one priest. "All the cases newly reported to us in recent weeks refer to the time period between 1950 and 1980," the archdiocese of Freiburg said. Meanwhile Augsburg Bishop Walter Mixa denied allegations of physical abuse levelled against him by people brought up in a church childcare institution where he once worked. "These people surely can't even remember me," Mixa told Welt am Sonntag newspaper. He said that he could not remember them, and did not recognize them in newspaper pictures. At least six former members of a children's home in the Bavarian town of Schrobenhausen, accuse Mixa of physical abuse, including slapping, punching and hitting children's bare bottoms, during his tenure as town priest from 1975-96. The alleged victims turned down an offer for Mixa to meet with them, after he denied their accusations. A Green Party politician and member of the Central Committee of German Catholics, Christa Nickels, spoke on state radio of the "greatest loss of confidence in the Catholic church since the time of Hitler." Meanwhile the Evangelical church in the Rhine valley said that more than 40 victims of sexual abuse by clerics had come forward since they introduced set procedures to deal with such cases in 2003. "On top of that, many people have approached us in the last days, describing experiences of abuse," said the acting head of Germany's Evangelical church, Nikolaus Schneider. An increasing number of sexual abuse cases in state childcare facilities in former East Germany have also emerged, with one youth detention centre registering 30 cases so far.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.