BishopAccountability.org
	Catholics Defend German Bishop Accused of Slapping Earth Times April 5, 2010 http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/317206,catholics-defend-german-bishop-accused-of-slapping.html Augsburg, Germany - A group of Catholics defended a German bishop Monday from accusations that he slapped orphans more than 30 years ago, saying in an open letter that Bishop Walter Mixa had consistently treated children with respect. The letter was drafted by nearly 20 Catholics who worked as child altar servers or were members of Catholic youth groups in the town of Schrobenhausen, while Mixa was parish priest there from 1975 to 1996. Altar servers carry jugs and ring bells to assist a priest during Catholic religious services. In the open letter, they said they never once knew Mixa to use force and could not imagine him as capable of hitting anyone. "We always knew him as a person who consistently treated young people and children with a great deal of respect and esteem," they said in the letter. "We had a cordial and harmonious relationship." A newspaper, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, last week said it had affidavits from six former teenaged inmates of an orphanage in the town asserting that Mixa slapped and spanked them for misbehaviour more than 30 years ago. Most of the teens came from broken homes. The state of Bavaria outlawed corporal punishment in 1980. Mixa, a theological conservative, is the first of Germany's 27 main bishops to be personally accused of mistreating young people.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.