GERMANY
God Discussion
By D. Beeksma
On January 9, 2013
Christian Pfeiffer, a criminologist who was investigating sexual abuse of minors by priests, has been fired by German Roman Catholic bishops, Euronews reports (see news video embedded below). Pfeiffer accuses the bishops of trying to censure a major report on the scandals, which looks at cases dating back to 1945.
Matthias Kopp, spokesperson of the Catholic Bishops Conference, says the investigation will be continued without Pfeiffer. “We did not give up the research project,” he told Euronews. “Of course it will be continued in order to come to terms with sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. It is not a matter of with or without Pfeiffer. We terminate the work with Pfeiffer today because the mutual trust is totally broken.”
A series of abuse scandals forced Pope Benedict XVI to issue an apology and offer compensation to victims in 2010, but Pfeiffer says a cover-up continues, “It is obvious that the project has failed because of the Catholic Church’s wish to control and to censure,” he said. “We were asked to sign a new contract in which the Church would have had the right to forbid the texts that had been written by us over years of work if they don’t like it.”
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