In a remarkable exchange shown on German TV on 6 February, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, was interviewed by Doris Wagner, a writer and theologian who was abused by a priest while a religious sister. Wagner left her community in 2011, and has written two books about abuse

Doris Wagner: To begin with, I’d like to tell you that I entered [The Work] – a community that is officially recognised by the Church – in the conviction that my superiors represented God. God had called me into this community and whatever it demanded of me came from Him and was therefore good – even if I did not at first understand it. I was fully convinced of this. This was the belief I had always had as a child and an adolescent, and it always worked up to the moment when a priest stood in my room, undressed me and proceeded to rape me. That was when I realised that that could not have come from God; that was impossible, it made no sense. And, at the same time, I knew that I had always kept to the rules to prevent anything like that happening.

My first impulse was that I must never tell anyone what had happened, as the most important thing was for no one ever to hear about it, otherwise people would begin to doubt the Church.