BERLIN — German bishops will revise their sexual abuse guidelines to make clear that prosecutors should be brought in early to investigate, the national bishops conference and the Justice Ministry said today.
Germany — Pope Benedict XVI’s homeland — has been shaken since January by the scandal over alleged abuse by clerics. Today, the head of the bishops conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, met with Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.
The minister, who has been critical of the Roman Catholic church over recent weeks, told Zollitsch that internal church investigations must not delay or hamper public prosecutors’ work, according to a statement issued after their meeting.
The bishops, who already have announced that they will review their guidelines, will change them to make clear “that public prosecutors will be brought in early on in suspected cases,” it said.
Existing guidelines dating back to 2002 say accused priests are advised to contact law enforcement on their own in “proven cases” of abuse and that church authorities may contact prosecutors — but they are not required to.
The Justice Ministry and the church will work together in a task force that would determine possible compensation in cases where the statute of limitations has expired, according to Thursday’s statement.
Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger irked Zollitsch in February by saying she believed the church was not truly interested in clearing up all sexual abuse cases. She also spoke of a “wall of silence” surrounding the church.
Separately, dissident theologian Hans Kueng, an 82-year-old former colleague and friend of Pope Benedict, urged bishops to push for reforms in the church.
Kueng said the church was now in its deepest crisis since the Protestant Reformation after the recent revelations of sexual abuse had caused an erosion of trust.
In an editorial published today in daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and other publications, Kueng said bishops should call for a new synod to discuss reforms.
He also accused the pope of not living up “to the great challenges of our time,” saying on the fifth anniversary of Benedict’s election to the papacy that his traditionalist approach had failed.
Some German dioceses recently have reported steep increases in the number of people leaving the church.
Zollitsch’s Freiburg archdiocese said 2,711 left the church in the southwestern region in March — compared with 1,058 a year earlier.
The Wuerzburg diocese in Bavaria said 1,233 left the church there in March — three times the 407 recorded a year earlier. The Munich archdiocese, where Benedict once served as archbishop, said it did not yet have figures for March.
Dozens of people protested at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate on Thursday against abuse in church and other institutions. They brought a model of a nun with a stick and the words “Never Again” emblazoned on her chest.
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI referred today to “attacks” on the church stemming from clerical sexual abuse scandal and said “we Christians” must repent for sins and recognize mistakes, news reports said.
Benedict made the off-the-cuff comments during his homily at a Mass inside the Vatican for members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the ANSA news agency reported.
Victims of clerical abuse have long demanded that Benedict take more personal responsibility for clerical abuse. Those demands have intensified in recent weeks as the Vatican and Benedict himself have been accused of negligence in handling some cases.
“I must say, we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word ‘repent,’ which seemed too tough,” ANSA quoted Benedict as saying. “But now under attack from the world, which has been telling us about our sins … we realize that it’s necessary to repent, in other words, recognize what is wrong in our lives.”
The Vatican didn’t immediately provide a text of the comments, the Mass wasn’t broadcast and a Vatican spokesman said he couldn’t immediately confirm the remarks.
ANSA said Benedict continued: “Open ourselves to forgiveness … and let ourselves be transformed. The pain of repentance, which is a purification and transformation, is a grace because it is renewal and the work of divine mercy.”
It was Benedict’s fullest allusion to the scandal since he sent a letter to the Irish faithful March 20 concerning the decades of abuse and church-mandated cover-up in that country.
The Catholic Church in Pope Benedict’s German homeland has been rocked by a widening abuse scandal in the past three months with hundreds of self described victims of heavy physical or sexual abuse coming forward.
At least one case of a pedophile priest who was reassigned to parish work after being accused of abusing minors has occurred in the Munich archdiocese where Benedict, then Joseph Ratzinger, served as archbishop from 1977-82.
The pontiff has not commented on the cases in his native country.
Kueng, who once worked alongside the young Ratzinger at the Second Vatican Council, sharply criticized the pope for his handling of abuse cases.
“It may not be silenced that the worldwide system of covering-up of sexual offenses by clergy men was steered by Cardinal Ratzinger’s Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” Kueng said in the editorial, which also appeared in the New York Times, La Repubblica and other dailies in France, Spain and Switzerland.
The congregation and its former head have recently come under attack by abuse victims for allegedly rebuffing or moving slowly on calls to remove molesting priests, essentially granting impunity to them and letting them keep ministering to minors.
Germany’s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, met today with the head of the German Bishops Conference, Robert Zollitsch — two months after she had irked him by saying she believed the church was not truly interested in clearing up all sexual abuse cases.
The justice minister has spoken of a “wall of silence” surrounding the church.
Some German dioceses have reported big increases this year in the number of people leaving the church. Zollitsch’s Freiburg archdiocese said 2,711 left the church in the southwestern region in March — compared with 1,058 a year earlier.
The Wuerzburg diocese in Bavaria said 1,233 left the church there in March — three times the 407 recorded a year earlier. The Munich archdiocese, where Benedict once served as archbishop, said it did not yet have figures for March.
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