Scope of latest clerical sex abuse begins to emerge

10. maar as die oue nie skuldig is nie
nie skuld bely nie
kan die nuwe natuurlik ook nie skuldig wees nie
en nooit voor stok gekry word
as hy die oue herhaal nie
alles begin dus van voor af aan
dié slag anders ingekleur

Antjie Krog
(down to my last skin)


The Irish Times
Monday, February 15, 2010
PADDY AGNEW in Rome

GERMAN SCANDAL: EVEN IN the short time since Pope Benedict summonsed the Irish bishops to Rome, reports of a burgeoning clerical sex abuse scandal in the Pope’s native Germany have begun to emerge.

The German reports are all the more alarming since, at least initially, they have concerned elite Jesuit boarding schools in Berlin, Hamburg, Bonn and other cities. Last week, Fr Theo Schneider resigned his position as principal of a Jesuit school in Bonn after two former pupils claimed to have been abused at the school.

The dimensions of the burgeoning German scandal are unclear. A group called “Round Table For Care in Children’s Homes” recently published an interim report which claimed that more than 150 victims of sexual abuse had come forward during the course of its own investigations into children’s homes, half of which in Germany are run by the Catholic Church.

The news magazine Der Spiegel last week reported that, following a survey of Germany’s 27 dioceses, at least 94 priests were suspected of sexual abuse of children.

Jesuit Hans Langendoerfer, secretary of the German bishops conference, told Der Spiegel : “The revelations show a dark side of the church that
scares me . . . We expressly want an investigation.”

There seems little doubt but that the German Catholic Church is just at the beginning of a long and painful process, all too familiar to Irish and American Catholics.

The German bishops conference is due to discuss the sex abuse question next week, whilst the Jesuit order in Germany will be conducting its own investigation into the scandal. Significantly, Fr Stefan Dartmann, head of the Jesuit order in Germany has said that “an immense tragedy is now becoming apparent”.

Clearly, Pope Benedict will be more than well informed of developments in the Catholic Church in his native land, a church that is second only to the US Catholic Church in terms of its contributions to Holy See coffers.

Several Vatican insiders have speculated that these latest disturbing reports in one of the oldest and most prestigious Catholic churches will most likely prompt the pope to take an ever harder line on the need to confront and clean up the clerical sex abuse crisis, worldwide.

The emergence of a German church crisis also prompts the intriguing consideration that the two Irish clerical sex abuse reports of last year, the Ryan report and the Murphy report, may well have served as an alarm call for the universal Catholic Church.

In the specifically Irish context, all of this may mean that the pope may largely endorse the findings of the Murphy report, which along with the Ryan report will be the main focus of this two-day meeting.

Furthermore, it may well mean a reprimand for those Irish church figures who have expressed reservations about the Murphy report’s findings, especially in relation to the allegations of the Dublin arch-diocese’s systematic “cover-up” policy.