CDF Prefect accused of hushing up abuse

The former Bishop of Regensburg and present Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, has been accused of systematically hushing up clerical sexual abuse while he was Bishop of Regensburg (2002-2012). In an interview in the German weekly Die Zeit on the report that one in three choirboys of the famous Regensburg “Domspatzen” choir had been abused (see The Tablet of 16 January), Fritz Wallner, the former chairman of the Regensburg diocesan council, described  what he called “The Regensburg System” introduced by Müller and his vicar-general, Michael Fuchs, which allegedly prevented abuse cases from being investigated.

Müller opted out of the Bishops’ Conference guidelines, which recommended that priests sentenced for sexual abuse of minors should never again be allowed to work with children or young people. He reinstalled a former perpetrator in a new parish without informing either the parish priest or the parishioners that the priest had been sentenced for sexual abuse in his previous parish. When the priest was arrested for abusing minors in his new parish, Müller said the priest had lied to him, telling him he was “cured”.

As late as 2012 Müller maintained that neither the bishop nor the Church was responsible for abusers. Responsibility lay solely with the abuser. Thus when, in 2010, “Domspatzen” choir trustees had urged further investigation of abuse committed by the priests who taught the choirboys, the diocese prevented them.

“Many more victims would have been listened to then,” Wallner said, calling on Fr Fuchs, still vicar-general of Regensburg, to resign.