German Church

A senior German bishop has apologised for thousands of sexual abuse cases.

The cases have taken place inside the Catholic Church in Germany.

The report released on Tuesday.

The report  concludes at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy between 1946 and 2014.

“Sexual abuse is a crime,”

 Cardinal Reinhard Marx is also the head of the German Bishops Conference,


“I’m ashamed for so many (of us) looking away,

I am ashemed for not wanting to recognise what happened and not helping the victims.

That goes for me as well.”

The apology came on the day Pope Francis acknowledged the sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church was driving people away.

Pope Francis acknowledged the sex abuse scandal is rocking the Catholic Church

The scandal was driving people away.

He said the church must change its ways if it wants to keep future generations.

The report on sex abuse in the German Catholic Church

The report  found that more than half of the victims were 13 or younger and most were boys.

Every sixth case involved rape and at least 1,670 clergy were involved.


Some 969 abuse victims were altar boys.

On average, the abuses happened multiple times over a period of at least 15 months.

The German Bishops Conference released its report on Tuesday.

Its report had already been leaked earlier this month

The report was heavily criticised for the lack of transparency

and the church’s refusal to let the researchers access original documents.

Instead of looking at the original church files, they sent questionnaires to the dioceses, which then provided the information.


The report was commissioned by the German Bishops Conference

and researched by experts from 3 universities (the universities of Giessen, Heidelberg and Mannheim).


The researchers wrote that

there was evidence that some files were manipulated or destroyed,

and many cases were not brought to justice.


Sometimes abuse suspects — primarily priests — were simply moved to other dioceses without the congregations being informed about their past.


“The figures are only the tip of the iceberg,”

Harald is a psychiatrist from Mannheim University.

He presented the report with Mr Marx and others during a convention of the German Bishops Conference.


“Generally, the risk of sexual abuse of children inside the Catholic Church continues to exist,


” Mr Dressing warned that the risk of sexual abuse continues to exist.

celibacy, the clergy’s power and homosexuality inside the church were all issues that promoted abuse.


Katarina is German justice minister Barley

“The dioceses and religious orders must finally take on responsibility

for decades of suppression and denial…

 the church must press criminal charges in every case.”

The Catholic Church has been struggling with sex abuse by its clergy for a long time.

In 2010, the German church was roiled (gejolak) by a sex abuse scandal

triggered by the head of a Jesuit school in Berlin who went public about decades-long sexual abuse of high school students by clergy.


Following that,

a whole wave of victims who were sexually abused by clergy spoke out across Germany.


next
 BERLIN —


A top German bishop has apologized for thousands of sexual abuse cases

The cases  took place inside the Catholic Church in Germany,

The church must change its ways if it wants to keep future generations.

The report found that more than half of the victims were 13 or younger and most were boys.

Every sixth case involved rape and at least 1,670 clergy were involved.

Some 969 abuse victims were altar boys.

On average, the abuses happened multiple times over a period of at least 15 months.

its report was already leaked earlier this month

and was heavily criticized for the lack of transparency

and was heavily criticized for the church's refusal to let the researchers access the original documents.

Instead of looking at the original church files,

they sent questionnaires to the dioceses, which then provided the information.

Many cases were not brought to justice.

Sometimes abuse suspects — primarily priests — were simply moved to other dioceses without the congregations being informed about their past.

"The figures are only the tip of the iceberg,"

celibacy, the clergy's power and homosexuality inside the church were all issues that promote abuse.

The church's failures in confronting sex abuse scandals have also roared back to the headlines recently

with revelations of abuses and cover-ups in the United States and Chile.

Fulda, Germany (CNN)Matthias Katsch says


he was 13 years old when a priest at his Jesuit school in Berlin first molested him.

His grades suffered and the priest pushed him to have extra tutoring with his teaching colleague, another priest.

This man, stripped him naked in the school music room,

This man bent him over the piano bench and beat him in a sadistic ritual

that was repeated multiple times over the next year.

"I thought there might be more boys like me

 but I always thought I was the only one with a second abuser.

It was a terrible shame for me,"

Katsch, now 55 and a campaigner seeking justice for victims of abuse in the Catholic Church.

"But I was shocked to find out
that I was not the only one.

There were many victims that experienced exactly the same grooming.

That's when I realized this was systematic."

Matthias Katsch, 55, now runs an organization that seeks justice for victims.

In 2010, Katsch went public with his story,

His story triggering an outpouring of testimony from dozens, then hundreds of other survivors.

The numbers are staggering: "at least" 3,677 people have been abused at the hands of more than 1,600 priests and other members of the clergy.

More than half the victims were under 14, as Katsch was at the time,

and most of them (the victims) were boys.

He  described the findings as "shameful."

"We are always shocked and deeply shaken that this happened inside our Church --

and is still possible today -- committed by priests and clergy, the people of God.

Those who were given the task to watch over people.

We must look at this again and again.

We have addressed this before. But we must do more."

But Katsch is doubtful that this report truly reveals the full scale of the crimes committed.

The report covers the "absolute bare minimum" of cases voluntarily reported by individual parishes,

He believes the real number of victims may be 10 times that many.

"For the survivors, the urgency is we want to know the truth now.

We have waited for such a long time, we want it now,"

He also believes the Church must address the issue of what the German Bishops' Conference calls "material benefits for recognition of suffering."

"The average payment to a survivor is 3,000 euros ($3,500).

And yet the German Church is the richest Church in the world.

It's ridiculous. And they know it."

While it is unclear exactly where the German Church ranks on the global Catholic rich list, it is undeniably extremely wealthy -- far more so than the Vatican.

Last year, Germany's Catholic Church raked in $7.5 billion thanks to its 19th-century "church tax" alone,

and it's expected to surpass that number this year.

In 2016, the wealthiest dioceses of Paderborn, Munich and Cologne together declared more than $13 billion in assets, from real estate to stocks, far more than the Vatican's estimated $8 billion.

Germany isn't the only country to impose a church tax --

Austria, Denmark and Sweden do as well -- but it does charge the highest rate.

If you are a registered Catholic, 8% to 9% of your income goes to the Catholic Church, according to German law.

The same applies to other denominations, including the Protestant Lutheran Church.

 In the last census, 30% of Germans were registered as Catholic -- that's nearly 24 million people, far more than any other faith or denomination.

The only way under the law to avoid the tax is by officially renouncing your faith, effectively barring you from receiving any religious service such as weddings or baptisms.

The German's Bishops' Conference estimates that only one-third of German Catholics actually pay the tax

but that still accounts for more than 80% of the Church's vast income.

While the Church spends considerable sums on charitable endeavors -- from education to care for the elderly --

and, taken together with the Protestant Church, is the second largest employer in Germany after the government,

a number of flagrant examples of overspending has shaken trust in the institution.

In 2014, Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Limburg was removed from his post after an inquiry revealed he had spent more than $40 million on a renovation of his official residence,

complete with walk-in closets and designer bathtubs.

Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst's official residence in Limburg was the subject of a financial inquiry.

The scandal earned him the nickname "Bishop Bling Bling"

and he was swiftly recalled to the Vatican by Pope Francis.

Since then, the German Bishops' Conference has made a concerted effort to increase transparency, publishing annual financial statements for each diocese.

But that is not enough for some critics of the Church.

"It's not transparent whatsoever," says Christian Weisner, of the Catholic reform group "Wir sind Kirche" ("We are church").

"The church appears transparent because it publishes financial information online.

But these figures are very general and vague.

When you look closely, you can't see exactly how the money is spent."

CNN asked him how it calculates how much an abuse survivor should receive in "recognition of suffering" and was referred to their website,

which states that a victim of sexual abuse could receive "up to 5,000 euros" with exceptional arrangements for "particularly serious cases."

Katsch is frustrated by the amount and the unrepentant language used to describe the payments.

"The Church paid me a recognition fee of 5,000 euros ($5,900)," he says.

"They don't call it compensation.

And I don't call it compensation either."

For many survivors like Katsch, what matters most is discovering the truth.

He says he received a "recognition" payment of 5,000 euros from the German Catholic Church only after one of his alleged attackers confessed to abusing multiple children.

"They call it a recognition fee?

Well, thank you very much, but that's not what I want," Katsch says.

"I want justice."

Root:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-6205981/German-bishops-apologise-thousands-sex-abuse-cases.html

A senior German bishop has apologised for thousands of sexual abuse cases reported to have taken place inside the Catholic Church in Germany.
The report released on Tuesday concludes at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy between 1946 and 2014.
“Sexual abuse is a crime,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who is also the head of the German Bishops Conference, told reporters.
“I’m ashamed for so many (of us) looking away, not wanting to recognise what happened and not helping the victims. That goes for me as well.”

The apology came on the day Pope Francis acknowledged the sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church was driving people away. He said the church must change its ways if it wants to keep future generations.
The report on sex abuse in the German Catholic Church found that more than half of the victims were 13 or younger and most were boys.
Every sixth case involved rape and at least 1,670 clergy were involved. Some 969 abuse victims were altar boys.
On average, the abuses happened multiple times over a period of at least 15 months.
The German Bishops Conference released its report on Tuesday, but it had already been leaked earlier this month and was heavily criticised for the lack of transparency and the church’s refusal to let the researchers access original documents.
Instead of looking at the original church files, they sent questionnaires to the dioceses, which then provided the information.


The report was commissioned by the German Bishops Conference and researched by experts from the universities of Giessen, Heidelberg and Mannheim.
The researchers wrote that there was evidence that some files were manipulated or destroyed, and many cases were not brought to justice.
Sometimes abuse suspects — primarily priests — were simply moved to other dioceses without the congregations being informed about their past.
“The figures are only the tip of the iceberg,” said Harald Dressing, a psychiatrist from Mannheim University who presented the report with Mr Marx and others in the central German city of Fulda during a convention of the German Bishops Conference.
“Generally, the risk of sexual abuse of children inside the Catholic Church continues to exist,” Mr Dressing warned. He said celibacy, the clergy’s power and homosexuality inside the church were all issues that promoted abuse.
German justice minister Katarina Barley said: “The dioceses and religious orders must finally take on responsibility for decades of suppression and denial… the church must press criminal charges in every case.”
The Catholic Church has been struggling with sex abuse by its clergy for a long time.
In 2010, the German church was roiled by a sex abuse scandal triggered by the head of a Jesuit school in Berlin who went public about decades-long sexual abuse of high school students by clergy.
Following that, a whole wave of victims who were sexually abused by clergy spoke out across Germany.


next
 BERLIN —
A top German bishop has apologized for thousands of sexual abuse cases that took place inside the Catholic Church in Germany, according to a devastating report released Tuesday that concludes at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy between 1946 and 2014.
"Sexual abuse is a crime," Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who is also the head of the German Bishops Conference, told reporters. "I'm ashamed for so many (of us) looking away, not wanting to recognize what happened and not helping the victims. That goes for me as well."
The apology came on the same day that Pope Francis acknowledged that the sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church was driving people away. He said the church must change its ways if it wants to keep future generations.
The report on sex abuse inside the German Catholic Church found that more than half of the victims were 13 or younger and most were boys. Every sixth case involved rape and at least 1,670 clergy were involved. Some 969 abuse victims were altar boys.
On average, the abuses happened multiple times over a period of at least 15 months.
The German Bishops Conference released its report Tuesday, but it was already leaked earlier this month and was heavily criticized for the lack of transparency and the church's refusal to let the researchers access the original documents.
Instead of looking at the original church files, they sent questionnaires to the dioceses, which then provided the information.
The report was commissioned by the German Bishops Conference and researched by experts from the Universities of Giessen, Heidelberg and Mannheim.
The researchers wrote that there was evidence that some files were manipulated or destroyed, and many cases were not brought to justice. Sometimes abuse suspects — primarily priests — were simply moved to other dioceses without the congregations being informed about their past.
"The figures are only the tip of the iceberg," said Harald Dressing, a psychiatrist from Mannheim University who presented the report together with Marx and others in the central German city of Fulda during a convention of the German Bishops Conference.
"Generally, the risk of sexual abuse of children inside the Catholic Church continues to exist," Dressing warned. He said celibacy, the clergy's power and homosexuality inside the church were all issues that promote abuse.
German Justice Minister Katarina Barley said "the dioceses and religious orders must finally take on responsibility for decades of suppression and denial ... the church must press criminal charges in every case."
The Catholic Church has been struggling with sex abuse by its clergy for a long time.
In 2010, the German church was roiled by a sex abuse scandal triggered by the head of a Jesuit school in Berlin who went public about decades-long sexual abuse of high school students by clergy. Following that, a whole wave of victims who were sexually abused by clergy spoke out across Germany.
The church's failures in confronting sex abuse scandals have also roared back to the headlines recently with revelations of abuses and cover-ups in the United States and Chile.

Fulda, Germany (CNN)Matthias Katsch says he was 13 years old when a priest at his Jesuit school in Berlin first molested him. His grades suffered and the priest pushed him to have extra tutoring with his teaching colleague, another priest.

This man, Katsch says, stripped him naked in the school music room, bent him over the piano bench and beat him in a sadistic ritual that was repeated multiple times over the next year.

"I thought there might be more boys like me but I always thought I was the only one with a second abuser. It was a terrible shame for me," says Katsch, now 55 and a campaigner seeking justice for victims of abuse in the Catholic Church.

"But I was shocked to find out that I was not the only one. There were many victims that experienced exactly the same grooming. That's when I realized this was systematic."

RELATED: Pope Francis slammed by victims over sexual abuse scandal

Matthias Katsch, 55, now runs an organization that seeks justice for victims.

In 2010, Katsch went public with his story, triggering an outpouring of testimony from dozens, then hundreds of other survivors.

On Tuesday, the German Bishops' Conference released the results of its own report into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church over the past seven decades.

The numbers are staggering: "at least" 3,677 people have been abused at the hands of more than 1,600 priests and other members of the clergy.

More than half the victims were under 14, as Katsch was at the time, and most of them were boys.

Speaking during the first day of the German Bishops' Conference in Fulda, central Germany, on Tuesday, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, its chairman, described the findings as "shameful."

"We are always shocked and deeply shaken that this happened inside our Church -- and is still possible today -- committed by priests and clergy, the people of God. Those who were given the task to watch over people. We must look at this again and again. We have addressed this before. But we must do more."

But Katsch is doubtful that this report truly reveals the full scale of the crimes committed. The report covers the "absolute bare minimum" of cases voluntarily reported by individual parishes, Katsch says, adding that he believes the real number of victims may be 10 times that many.

"For the survivors, the urgency is we want to know the truth now. We have waited for such a long time, we want it now," Katsch says.

He also believes the Church must address the issue of what the German Bishops' Conference calls "material benefits for recognition of suffering."

"The average payment to a survivor is 3,000 euros ($3,500). And yet the German Church is the richest Church in the world. It's ridiculous. And they know it."

Members of the German Bishops' Conference at the opening Mass of the conference on September 25 in the city of Fulda in central Germany.

While it is unclear exactly where the German Church ranks on the global Catholic rich list, it is undeniably extremely wealthy -- far more so than the Vatican.

Last year, Germany's Catholic Church raked in $7.5 billion thanks to its 19th-century "church tax" alone, and it's expected to surpass that number this year.

In 2016, the wealthiest dioceses of Paderborn, Munich and Cologne together declared more than $13 billion in assets, from real estate to stocks, far more than the Vatican's estimated $8 billion.

Germany isn't the only country to impose a church tax -- Austria, Denmark and Sweden do as well -- but it does charge the highest rate.

If you are a registered Catholic, 8% to 9% of your income goes to the Catholic Church, according to German law. The same applies to other denominations, including the Protestant Lutheran Church. In the last census, 30% of Germans were registered as Catholic -- that's nearly 24 million people, far more than any other faith or denomination.

The only way under the law to avoid the tax is by officially renouncing your faith, effectively barring you from receiving any religious service such as weddings or baptisms.

The German's Bishops' Conference estimates that only one-third of German Catholics actually pay the tax but that still accounts for more than 80% of the Church's vast income.

While the Church spends considerable sums on charitable endeavors -- from education to care for the elderly -- and, taken together with the Protestant Church, is the second largest employer in Germany after the government, a number of flagrant examples of overspending has shaken trust in the institution.

In 2014, Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Limburg was removed from his post after an inquiry revealed he had spent more than $40 million on a renovation of his official residence, complete with walk-in closets and designer bathtubs.

Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst's official residence in Limburg was the subject of a financial inquiry.

The scandal earned him the nickname "Bishop Bling Bling" and he was swiftly recalled to the Vatican by Pope Francis.

Since then, the German Bishops' Conference has made a concerted effort to increase transparency, publishing annual financial statements for each diocese. But that is not enough for some critics of the Church.

"It's not transparent whatsoever," says Christian Weisner, of the Catholic reform group "Wir sind Kirche" ("We are church").

"The church appears transparent because it publishes financial information online. But these figures are very general and vague. When you look closely, you can't see exactly how the money is spent."

RELATED: Opinion: The Pope should probably resign

CNN asked the German Bishops' Conference how it calculates how much an abuse survivor should receive in "recognition of suffering" and was referred to their website, which states that a victim of sexual abuse could receive "up to 5,000 euros" with exceptional arrangements for "particularly serious cases."

Katsch is frustrated by the amount and the unrepentant language used to describe the payments.

"The Church paid me a recognition fee of 5,000 euros ($5,900)," he says. "They don't call it compensation. And I don't call it compensation either."

For many survivors like Katsch, what matters most is discovering the truth. He says he received a "recognition" payment of 5,000 euros from the German Catholic Church only after one of his alleged attackers confessed to abusing multiple children.

"They call it a recognition fee? Well, thank you very much, but that's not what I want," Katsch says. "I want justice."

CNN's Jessica Benne contributed to this report.