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CATHOLIC CHURCH

German bishop resigns over Catholic church’s ‘failure’ in abuse scandal

One of Germany's leading Catholic bishops, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, said Friday he had offered Pope Francis his resignation over the church's "institutional and systemic failure" in its handling of child sex abuse scandals.

German bishop resigns over Catholic church's 'failure' in abuse scandal
Reinhard Marx delivering a Christmas Mass in December 2020 in Munich. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Tobias Hase

“It is important to me to share the responsibility for the catastrophe of the sexual abuse by Church officials over the past decades,” said Marx in a letter to the pope dated May 21st and published Friday by his archdiocese in Munich.

Investigations and reports had “consistently shown there have been many personal failures and administrative mistakes but also institutional or ‘systemic’ failure,” added Marx, who was president of the German Bishops’ Conference from 2012 to 2020.

Slamming colleagues who “refuse to believe there is a shared responsibility in this respect”, he said the Church was at “a dead end”.

He added that he hoped his resignation would set a sign for a new beginning for the Church. According to the diocese’s statement, the pope had granted permission for the letter to be published and told Marx to remain in his role until he received an answer.

Germany’s Catholic church has been rocked by a string of reports in recent years which have laid bare the extent of sexual abuse of children by clergymen.

A study commissioned by the German Bishops’ Conference under Marx’s presidency and released in 2018 showed that 1,670 clergymen had committed some type of sexual attack against 3,677 minors, mostly boys, between 1946 and 2014.

However, its authors said the actual number of victims was almost certainly much higher.

Last month, the pope sent two envoys to the diocese of Cologne to
investigate “possible mistakes” in its reaction to reports on child sex abuse.

Known as a prominent advocate for reform, Marx has previously apologised on behalf of the Church to the victims of sexual abuse.

In April, he turned down the Federal Cross of Merit amid criticism from victims’ groups over the Church’s response to the scandals.

Germany’s Catholic Church counted 22.6 million members in 2019 and it is still the largest religion in the country, but the number is two million fewer than in 2010 when the first major wave of paedophile abuse cases came to light.

READ ALSO: Over 300 victims ‘sexually abused through Germany’s top diocese’ in Cologne

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CATHOLIC CHURCH

At least 3,000 paedophiles active in French church since 1950: report

Thousands of paedophiles have operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950, the head of an independent commission investigating the scandal told AFP, days ahead of the release of its report.

French archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin leads his last mass,on June 28, 2020. Barbarin was released on appeal on January 30 for his silence on the sexual abuse of a priest, and resigned quickly afterwards.
French archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin leads his last mass,on June 28, 2020. Barbarin was released on appeal on January 30 for his silence on the sexual abuse of a priest, and resigned quickly afterwards. Photo: Jeff Pachoud/AFP

The commission’s research had uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 paedophile priests or other members of the church, said Jean-Marc Sauve, adding that it was “a minimum estimate”.

The commission’s report is due to be released on Tuesday after two and a half years of research based on church, court and police archives, as well as interviews with witnesses.

The report, which Sauve said runs to 2,500 pages, will attempt to quantify both the number of offenders and the number of victims.

It will also look into “the mechanisms, notably institutional and cultural ones” within the Church which allowed paedophiles to remain, and will offer 45 proposals.

READ ALSO: 

The independent commission was set up in 2018 by the French Catholic Church in response to a number of scandals that shook the Church in France and worldwide.

Its formation also came after Pope Francis passed a landmark measure obliging those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors.

Made up of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians, its brief was to investigate allegations of child sex abuse by clerics dating back to the 1950s.

When it began its work it called for witness statements and set up a telephone hotline, then reported receiving thousands of messages in the months that followed.

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