The Church in Germany is at a tipping point that is reminding many of events of 500 years ago, when a storm of protest was unleashed that was to change the face of Catholicism for ever

In the bright, stuccoed glory of Munich’s Theatine Church, soloists and ensemble reflect mournfully on the Catholic Church’s darkest disgrace. Oratio is a musical work of harrowing beauty by composer Mathias Rehfeldt that adapts Jeremiah’s Lamentations on the fall of Jerusalem (“They shamelessly abused us ... the crown has fallen”) to the abuse crisis in the global Catholic Church. As the crisis reaches a scale beyond rational understanding, the searing music of Oratio, paired with an ancient lament of mourning and salvation, opens the ear – and the soul – to a space no words can reach. “We wanted to send a signal that wasn’t just a one-off but would last,” said Fr Robert Mehlhart OP, the co-creator of the piece, conductor of its premiere and director of music at the Theatine. “In the original, ­others are responsible for the catastrophe, but in our piece the evil comes from within. Blame for what happened in the Church cannot be shifted to those outside.”

After three decades of clerical sexual abuse revelations in Ireland, the United States, Australia and elsewhere – with the now familiar cycle of media reports, brave survivors’ testimonies, reluctant enquiries, public fury and gauche apologies – the German Church now finds itself at the same existential tipping point. There is heated disagreement on the causes of the crisis in Germany but, half a millennium after Martin Luther’s stand against Rome, there is a growing consensus that a storm of significant historical gravity is brewing.