Bishop Joseph Bonnemain of Chur, who is leading investigations into sexual abuse in the Swiss Church, has overridden canon 489 which requires dioceses annually to destroy documents of criminal cases in matters of morals.
At a press conference in Zürich on 12 September immediately after the publication of a major report on abuse, Bonnemain announced that all Swiss dioceses and church organisations would be required to sign a declaration committing not to destroy files relating to abuse allegations.
He said it was imperative that the Church commit itself to a radical culture change.
“The coming generation has a right to a purified Church,” Bonnemain said. “Only a Church that is free of violence has the right to exist.”
The abuse report by historians from the University of Zürich was a pilot study commissioned by the Swiss bishops’ conference. It was the first systematic attempt to record scientifically sexual abuse in the Swiss Catholic Church.
It identified 1,002 cases of abuse and 510 perpetrators since the 1950s but concluded that these figures were only the “tip of an iceberg”.
A more comprehensive study, which will study the archives of religious orders, diocesan bodies and Catholic schools and institutions, will follow in the next three years.
Both abuse victims’ organisations and the authors of the current study complained that they had not been able to consult the archives in the Swiss nuncio’s office in Bern nor Vatican archives concerning Swiss cases.
But on 17 September, the Swiss nuncio, Archbishop Martin Krebs, said in a statement that according to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations the archives and documents of a diplomatic mission are inviolable and shall not be seized or opened by the host country. The Swiss nuncio’s office’s archives would therefore remain closed.
The president of the Swiss bishops’ conference, Bishop Felix Gmür of Basle, said he was shattered by the abuse report.
He said the Swiss bishops recognised the Church’s guilt and the suffering it had caused. They wanted to do everything humanly possible so that the victims saw justice done and sexual abuse prevented in future.
“For years, too many Church leaders have acted irresponsibly,” said Gmür.
“They failed to take victims seriously and defended the perpetrators. Behind each case of abuse there is immeasurable suffering which was downplayed, concealed and hushed up. In each case a human being, a face, a life was destroyed. A family and an environment suffered and is still suffering.”
Abbot Peter von Sury OSB, abbot of Beinwil and Mariastein and representative of Switzerland’s religious orders, said: “There is no excuse either for the crimes of the perpetrators or for those who hushed them up.”
Separately from the abuse investigation, Bishop Bonnemain issued a formal reprimand last week to two priests for allowing a lay woman to pray alongside them at the altar during the Eucharistic prayers in a Mass last year.
Video footage of the liturgy in August 2022 appeared to show Monika Schmid concelebrating the Eucharist, as she extended her arms and pronounced the words of consecration.
Bonnemain said that following “careful investigation” of the Mass, no “criminal proceedings” were required under Canon law.
He added: “However, important liturgical regulations that are binding for the entire Church were ignored in this service.”
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