AUGSBURG (GERMANY)
The Tablet [Market Harborough, England]
November 13, 2025
By Natalie K. Watson
The study had praised recent diocesan leadership while noting past failings and recommending measures to strengthen prevention of abuse.
German researchers criticised a study of abuse in the Diocese of Augsburg published last month.
Martina Steber und Dietmar Süß of the University of Augsburg told the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung that the study “suffers from very fundamental methodological flaws”. It failed to seek archival traces or sources other than diocesan documents, nor did it make a systematic evaluation of the experiences of victims.
The study had praised recent diocesan leadership while noting past failings and recommending measures to strengthen prevention of abuse, including training to sensitise priests of cases of abuse and making new abuse cases public in accordance with data protection laws. The Bishop of Augsburg Bertram Meier responded to the report saying the diocese “cannot rest on our laurels”.
Steber and Süß also queried the the independent commission responsible for the report, some of whose members were close to the Church, including a head of department at the bishop’s office.
A diocesan spokesperson said that the descriptions of events in the study were based on statements by victims and that questioning them again would risk “retraumatisation”, a danger which critics had “completely overlooked”.
The experiences of survivors were the subject of a separate study by the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. “This comprehensive approach should serve as a model for addressing the abuse,” the spokesperson said.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recently publicised the case of a man in the Diocese of Augsburg who was abused by two priests in positions of responsibility, introduced to the city’s gay scene by the bishop’s secretary and threatened with death by an auxiliary bishop should he make this public. The diocese has been paying the man a monthly pension of €3,500 since 2011.
Asked why the case was not mentioned in the report, the head of the commission Hubert Paul said the man concerned was of age at the time of the events and not in the care of the diocese, whereas this study focused exclusively on minors.
“The public prosecutor’s office did not pursue the investigation due to the obvious statute of limitations,” said the diocesan spokesperson, explaining that the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome had informed the diocese that the case should therefore be closed.
[Sex abuse: When will the Church put the children first?]
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