The turmoil in Cologne over Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki’s handling of abuse in the major archdiocese was having a considerable negative impact on his neighbouring diocese of Limburg, German bishops’ conference president, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, has warned.
“I can feel that not only Catholics and abuse victims but the public in general are asking themselves: ‘Can I believe the Church (authorities)? Does what they are saying sound credible? Should I (as a Catholic) still get involved?’ That is what we are struggling against and it is due to the situation in Cologne,” he said at an online press conference, adding that he was not speaking as conference president but as bishop of the Cologne archdiocese’s neighbouring diocese of Limburg.
The turmoil in Cologne is rooted in Woelki’s refusal to publish an abuse report on the archdiocese, and his commissioning of a second one that he has promised to publish next month. In the Limburg abuse report, which was published in June 2020, “deeds, perpetrators and victims” were clearly stated by name, Bätzing recalled.
“We wanted to disclose the names of those responsible and that was what we did”, he said. A “cultural shift” had taken place in the Church as far as priestly sexual abuse was concerned. Only transparency and publishing results (of abuse studies) could regain trust in the Church, Bätzing emphasised.
Meanwhile, the 34 parish priests in the archdiocese of Cologne who at the end of January sent a protest letter to Cardinal Woelki when he announced that he was not publishing the abuse report he had commissioned, have had an online meeting with the cardinal. Both sides had expressed very different views and the meeting ended without any concrete results, the priests told the press afterwards.
According to the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, the new abuse report commissioned by Cardinal Woelki which is due for publication on 18 March, shows that both the number of abuse perpetrators and the number of abuse victims in the archdiocese of Cologne were higher than reported in the bishops’ conference’s 2018 abuse study. The new report claimed that there had been 300 abuse victims and 200 perpetrators instead of 135 victims and 87 perpetrators.
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