An external commission analyzed the sexualized abuse in the Archdiocese of Freiburg. There are also allegations against two former bishops.

“We have no praise to give,” was the summary of retired judge Eugen Endress on Tuesday morning. During the presentation of the results of the report on sexualized violence in the Archdiocese of Freiburg, he got angry after a few minutes. For Endress, the procedure in Freiburg, as the sexualized abuse was covered up for years, seems almost absurd.

He describes things that have also become clear in other reports of abuse: accused priests were systematically protected by the church institution for years through transfers, but not children. Assaults and violence were trivialized by those responsible and also in the communities, evidence of the knowledge of abuse by those responsible disappeared.

Victims of sexualised violence have been waiting for the report of the independent working group “Power Structures and File…