BishopAccountability.org
	Bishop Admits He May Have Given the "Odd Smack" By Derek Scally The Irish Times April 17, 2010 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0417/1224268540820.html A LEADING conservative bishop in Germany has come under fire after admitting he may have “slapped” children at an orphanage, two weeks after dismissing their allegations as lies. Bishop Walter Mixa of Augsburg is accused of abusing at least half a dozen children at an orphanage near Munich when a priest there in the 1970s and 1980s. The bishop, one of Germany’s most controversial church leaders, earlier this month issued a statement that he had “never used physical violence in any form” against children. Now he appears to have revised that position. “If the debate has turned to the question of slapping, I will honestly say that as a long-time teacher and priest dealing with very many youths, I cannot rule out the odd smack in the face 20 years ago,” he said in an interview to be published tomorrow. Four women who spent their childhood at the orphanage have sworn in affidavits that Bishop Mixa hit them. A man who lived in the orphanage from 1972 to 1982 told the Suddeutsche Zeitung daily of regular beatings on his bare buttocks with a carpet beater. “He pulled down my trousers at least 50 times in total and hit me with a stick five to seven times on my bottom,” said the unnamed man. Another man said that, when he was beaten, Bishop Mixa shouted at him: “Accept God’s punishment”, or “Satan is in you, I’ll drive him out.” Many German politicians have called for him to resign. Earlier this week, Fr Klaus Mertes, headmaster of the Jesuit school where Germany’s clerical abuse revelations began in January, accused Bishop Mixa of trying to “discredit victims”. Meanwhile, a Regensburg court has fined British Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the controversial Society of St Pius X, ˆ10,000 in absentia for denying the Holocaust in an interview conducted near the city last year. The interview with Swedish television took place as Pope Benedict began the process of lifting the excommunication against Bishop Williamson and three others ordained by controversial, late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.