Misconduct of leading diocesan officials?

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Misconduct of leading diocesan officials?

Symbol image files © Aleksandra Nigmatulina (shutterstock)

For the first time in Germany, an independent and comprehensive study on possible misconduct by leading diocesan officials in dealing with abuse cases is published in Cologne. Cardinal Woelki himself had commissioned the study.

The Munich law firm "Westpfahl Spilker Wastl" will present the results of its approximately one and a half years of research in the personnel files and other documents of the archdiocese in a press conference on Thursday of next week. As the archdiocese further announced, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki and other responsible persons will also learn about the results for the first time at the press conference. This is part of the independence of the new study.

135 affected persons and 87 accused persons in Cologne

The survey follows up on the abuse study presented by the bishops' conference in the fall of 2018. Thereafter, church records from 1946 to 2014 found evidence of nationwide 3.677 affected persons of sexual assaults and on approximately 1.670 accused priests, deacons and religious.

For Cologne, the investigation recorded 135 people affected and 87 accused. Woelki then commissioned the further expertise to uncover mistakes by those responsible as well as systemic deficits. Lawyers should also check whether state and church law has been violated in the process.

Cologne's vicar general Markus Hofmann had announced that the office would name names. Recommendations are also expected for further handling of cases of sexualized violence. If personal guilt emerges, he can understand calls for resignations, Hofmann said. But it should be differentiated. In cases that, from today's perspective, had been handled incorrectly, there could have been no culpable action, even according to the state of knowledge at the time.

Investigations go back to Cardinal Frings' time in office

The period under investigation goes back to the tenures of Cologne Cardinals Josef Frings (1887-1978), Joseph Hoffner (1906-1987) and Joachim Meisner (1933-2017). The respective vicars general as heads of church administration and the heads of personnel, including Norbert Feldhoff, will also be put to the test.

But also the work of his successors, the current Auxiliary Bishop of Cologne Dominikus Schwaderlapp and the Archbishop of Hamburg Stefan Hebe, are the subject of the study. On behalf of the diocese of Munster, the university there has launched a similar study. First interim results to be presented Wednesday evening.

The comic foil "Wanted" paid by professionalists, religious fuhrers and the fate themselves – and how to manipulate all this

It is only the self-contempt, after which one was owned by the director Timur Bekmambetov has to change his anti-hero Wesley first, so that it recognizes his destiny. The result: Emancipation from the previous duckmouse life and embrace of private anarchism Mundet in reflected individualism. "Wanted" Even presents itself as a wholly individual action film bar.

There is a fight sequence in "Wanted", The pistol-reinforced Wesley against the knife specialists "Butcher", And she makes pretty clear what Bekmbetov fascinates: firearms, as a parapet of the body. The fight with them as a physical experience, the departure from the disperse firefight to a full-contact spectacle.

The method to realize this is well known: extreme time magnifiers and "Bullet Time"-Effects melt the speed difference of humans and balls together, give the audience overview of the events that can only be in the cinema. "matrix" and impensy epigones made it, "Wanted" it only does it.

The firearms in this movie are no longer a longer, they are stylized to melee weapons with just rough range, at least if a killer of the brotherhood meets a flat opponent. Then, by name, they are even suitable for direct exchange: balls will not be dodged anymore, as Keanu Reeves still did, they will now be parped, with their own, well-targeted bullet.

The fetishization of firearms, which is the goal, ultimately to a similar "honorable" Army genus How to raise the knight’s sword can already be found in "matrix" and "Equilibrium" (Kurt Wimmer, 2002). The sword fight is a symbol of a violent-related, but due to its personality and physical involvement significantly legitimate form of conflict resolution.

The search for methods to bread firearms equailed, drove their bleeding in video and computer games – from the shot beat combinations of one "Devil May Cry" About the gunblade of "Final fantasy"-line. "Wanted" Only one thing inherently rejoices, and simultaneously removes from this physique and near the confrontation when he finding the ball of a killer with a huge armor gun from many miles away her destination.

These two sniper sequences are it which in the static-celebrated body of the action scenes in "Wanted" a little like foreign corporation act. At the same time, however, they also mark a failure of the blob of crafts of a braidingly operational mandatory contractor opposite the craftsmanship and list of a prudent from a safe distance acting opponents.

It is noteworthy that Bekmbetov is structured his film partly as a classic sports film, especially the exempt training sequence in the first film half jumping here. Murder, power "Wanted" Unmistly clear, is always sport, and accordingly, the teachers of the "Fraternity" Killer Guild also to Works: That’s how said "Butcher" Wesley contributes the fight with the knife who "Repairman" On the other hand, it ensures that the Profikikiller in PES is also hard in taking in – with a regular costume Vugel for the trainee. Of the "Gunsmith" Finally, the connection to the technicality of the firearms, he shows Wesley, as this can fly with a flying movement of the wrist the pistol balls also fly around curves and corners.

Only tactics and calculus does not get from the professors of this "Fraternity"-Academy conveys, but instead studies the attention of his father on his own initiative (who himself killer in the "Fraternity" was). The killer-physis is completely perfect when perfectly designed – but always a little tumber – violence is still the reason, the reflection. His father, "Cross", At the beginning of the film, even completely emancipated by the porousness of his profession by significant by his quasi-counterpart, significant "Mr. X" named, Pressing.

Balance here "Wanted" ideological: the brotherhood, a sectahnal community, the "it has been available since about 1000 years", is located in a former monastery in any American coal town – and in a monastery in "Eastern Arabia" (Even if the venue looks more like Central Europe), the cult took his beginning.

The code is always right

In a jacking cover we see a handful of shaping in monk cute, bent over a loom. They discovered a code in the textiles, put out randomly small irregularities of tie in binary code and these in letters, and found them name. The names of your murder victims. "Sloan" the reigning boss exeget is called "Fraternity", and his trends are obedient soldiers. "Fox" – Chef instructor Angelina Jolie – Wesley is once explosive why she believes so unconditionally to the fateful loom code: so a man of the brotherhood should fall to the victim, but survived and died then Fox’s father.

"We Do not Know How Far The Ripples of Our Decisions Go. We Kill One, And Maybe Save A Thousand. That’s the code of the fraternity. That’s what we believe in, and that’s why we do it."

However, it is by no means so that in "Wanted" Faith in the loom code, the loom prophecies ultimately turns out as an air number – on the contrary: it is finally Sloan, who, as once his name appeared in the tie, began to interpret the code after his own will and thus the Death hundreds (says Z.B. a full-occupied train to create a ravine).

The code is always right, there is no doubt, and it is completely irrelevant, whether one is now as analogy on the Bible, the Koran or the Torah. "Wanted" is not an anti-reliant film, but he is definitely guessing against church institutions, opposite the artists and exegetes of the relevant writings. In short: against all those who send people under religious pretext into a fight.

"Wanted" but by no means negotiates this discourse only on a religious level. So Wesley at the beginning of the film is a frustrated and inconspicuous Buroknecht, as well as the nameless protagonist in David Finchers "Fight Club". Only the contact to the brotherhood arouses his dormant talents as a hipsrage, and allows him a sham emancipation from his drug and very satisfactory everyday life.

Only between the lines becomes clear that even this step for Wesley is just a placebo that the sudden self-realization in cynical private anchor is only another facade. So he can not resist it, for example, a murder victim wide grinning "Sorry" call behind – just that word, whose surprised use Fox has still kept the notorious duckmauser at its first encounter. The conscious ironic refraction with the old life reveals that also Wesley’s sudden exploitation is only of artistic nature. The step towards the actual self-design of his fate succeeds the protagonist only through honest and self-reflection, not by attachment to one or more standard.

Bekmambetov uses for this deconstruction of deterministic thinking above all the image of the weaving machine: so it is Wesley’s final examination task of his training, to catch the swept and outgoing boat of the loom with a blob from the machine – and thus spellfully his fate in his own hands too to take. Also, from the once carefully in Reihr und Link’s thread of the weaving machine according to an explosion and Wesley’s completely completed emancipation nothing more abundant. Instead, the impenetrable tangle of individual thread in Sloans is like a former "reading"-Rooms highly still a destructed spider web.

"Wanted" Does not crank on a lack of subtly negotiated discourses. The overld hip staging and the undamaged cynicism can balance Bekmambetov’s movie with his clever script. But: He’s lacking the will to tell you. Bekmambetov seems to have no interest in the emergencies of his pictures, for him apparently only pays what is going on in the center. Details like the incontinent collateral victims of the professional lilids degenerate to background noise, and confer such physically presumptuous film the taste of a little thoughtful and dry theory.

At the same time, Bekmbetov is much too fascinated by superflatable (and no new) special-effect sightsee values than that the story could ever really penetrate the foreground of the film. A coil does the density, the protagonist Wesley in Best "Fight Club"-Manier to reflect in voice-over comments on his life. For the sly and thoughtful movie, to which "Wanted" Actually had developed, the result is far too loud. For a loud movie, however, he is too soulless and empty.

Church in the Indian village © Alexander Pitz (KNA)

Two weeks before the Amazon Synod at the Vatican, committed missionaries hope for a tailwind for their work in the affected areas. In the Ecuadorian Indian village of Sarayaku, too, people are looking to Rome with anticipation.

When Sister Rosa Elena Pico received her current assignment, she reacted with horror. "Oh God, they sent me to the jungle," had been her first thought. The 58-year-old from the community of the Missionaries of Mary of the Coredemptrix accepted the challenge.

Wearing a white veil and gray robe, she boarded a rickety light aircraft in November 2017 and landed on a grassy airstrip in the green sea of the Ecuadorian rainforest. Since then, she has been living with two fellow sisters in a wooden hut in the Indio village of Sarayaku – far from civilization.

Amazon Synod gives hope for new impetus

One of the women is currently out of action due to illness. In general, life in the jungle entails a number of difficulties. There is no road network in Sarayaku, but mosquitoes and other bloodsuckers are omnipresent. One must also beware of poisonous snakes.

Nevertheless, the sisters persist in pursuing their goal: spreading the Catholic faith. "We share the life of the indigenous inhabitants," says Pico, who comes from the Andean city of Cuenca. Of the planned Amazon synod in the Vatican (6. to 27. October), she hopes for new impulses. Latin America's rainforest is in great danger, she says. More needs to be done to protect it, not least by the church, she says.

Sarayaku is a symbol of indigenous resistance

In fact, the 135.Sarayaku's 000-hectare territory has been under constant threat for years. Because under the huts of the approximately 2.000 Kichwa Indians is located petroleum. International corporations would be only too happy to start exploiting them right away.

Deforestation and pollution would be the inevitable consequences; the self-determined lifestyle of the Indians with fishing, modest agriculture and a little ecotourism could hardly be preserved in this way. But while indigenous peoples around the world are being overrun by civilization, Sarayaku has become a symbol of indigenous resistance beyond Ecuador's borders.

Oil companies want the "black gold"

After a long dispute with countless skirmishes, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica handed down a verdict in 2012 that caused a sensation: it ruled in favor of the Kichwa people: the Ecuadorian state had violated international agreements when awarding oil production concessions for the Sarayaku region.

The "petroleros," already 1.450 kilograms of explosives planted in the ground had to retreat. But the danger is not over. In Sarayaku's meeting hut, built on a sandy plateau in the center of the village, the members of the community council report on ever new dubious actions by the oil companies to get their hands on the "black gold" after all.

Harmony with nature as a goal

"Our fight against the corporations continues," say the tribal leaders. One of them is Franco Gualinga, the ex-president of the settlement. "We continue to resist colonization," stresses the 50-year-old. The goal is to live in harmony with nature, as the ancestors did.

Support comes from the Catholic Church. The cross-national church network Repam (Red Eclesial Panamazonica) is particularly active in promoting the interests of the indigenous peoples. Founded in 2014 by bishops, priests, religious and lay people from the Amazon – as the church's response to the ongoing destruction.

Schools not particularly good

Sister Rosa Elena is one of those who provide help on the spot. She sees deficits first and foremost in education. As she walks through the village square surrounded by huts at lunchtime, she is greeted by Indio children playing. "They can go to school here, but it's not very good," missionary says.

She therefore tries to set her own accents in dealing with the children – for example, on the subject of sexual morality. Many would have sexual intercourse at the age of twelve or thirteen. "That's normal here," Pico says with a critical undertone.

"They love the forest and want to protect it"

She resists romantic jungle cliches and an overly glorifying view of indigenous culture. "They love the forest and want to protect it."But by no means all would be born environmentalists. Gasoline residues, for example, are often disposed of in the nearby Rio Bobonaza out of ignorance.

The criticism of the sister and her strictness in some matters of faith are not always well received. "I have also been asked to leave again," she admits. They point out in such conversations that it is the bishop alone who has to decide about it.

Priest shortage in the Amazon region

Conflicts like these show: The villagers have accepted Catholicism in many respects, but the priests have not. The chapel in the heart of Sarayaku bears witness to this. Nevertheless, people are reluctant to let newcomers interfere in their private lives. Pico cites the lack of priests in the Amazon as the biggest problem in her work. A Colombian clergyman from the nearest town comes to visit by boat only every few weeks.

"We urgently need more representatives to administer the sacraments," the missionary demands. She hopes that a solution will be found at the synod in the Vatican. That, she is convinced, would make God's message much more heard in the threatened rainforest.

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