Relief organization expects drop in donations

adminonDecember 31, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

Relief organization expects drop in donations

After abuse cases became known, the aid organization Oxfam draws consequences. External experts are to investigate the extent of the incidents. In addition, the aid organization wants to regain lost trust.

After sexual abuse cases at Oxfam, the aid organization has announced consequences. An external commission of inquiry with leading international women's rights experts will comprehensively examine sexual violence and sexual exploitation, organizational culture and processes. In return, she said, she should also have access to internal documents of the aid organization, which has around 10,000 employees worldwide.000 employees, said the managing director of Oxfam Germany, Marion Lieser, in Berlin on Friday.

Action plan

A ten-point action plan also calls for doubling the number of staff worldwide to protect against sexual abuse, exploitation and harassment, and tripling the annual budget for this to more than $1 million, he said. This was the aid organization's reaction to reports that there had been incidents of sexual abuse by Oxfam staff during an emergency aid mission in Haiti in 2011. Among other things, sex parties with prostitutes are alleged to have been celebrated.

The aid agency has since parted ways with six former employees who worked in Haiti, Lieser said.

Similar incidents had also occurred in Chad in 2006. A total of 87 cases of sexual abuse have been registered internally by Oxfam so far, Lieser said. Other aid organizations such as "Doctors Without Borders" and the "International Rescue Committee" have also publicized cases of sexual assault in recent days.

External commission of inquiry

There may also have been cases of abuse in other countries, Lieser said. The external commission of inquiry will begin its work in the coming weeks. Discussions are currently being held between Oxfam and international experts. Lieser announced that a final report is expected about six months after the start of the commission of inquiry, which will then be presented to the public. Oxfam expects a drop in donations after the cases of abuse became known. "We will have to fight for the trust people have lost," Lieser said.

Decline in donations feared

Meanwhile, other aid organizations also fear declines in donations. It is understandable "that the disgust is particularly great when something like this happens in the context of aid organizations that have a very high ethical standard and that actually want to help," said the chairman of the Association for Development Policy (Venro), Bernd Bornhorst, in the Inforadio of the radio station Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB). Venro is the umbrella organization of over 120 church and private aid organizations.

In order to avert lasting damage, it is important to make clear, in addition to comprehensive clarification, "that we always have to deal with sexual violence and sexual assaults where there are power imbalances. In addition, it must be made clear that the incidents were "nothing systemic" but "the misconduct of individual employees," explained Bornhorst.

Almost as if through the back door, Pope Benedict XVI. arrived in Sydney on Sunday. So low-key and without any ceremony that his ninth major trip abroad hasn't really begun yet, certainly not in a country known for its loud cordiality. After the longest flight in the history of the pope – 21 hours with a fuel stop in Darwin, northern Australia – the 81-year-old head of the church is recovering from his jet lag in a strictly private environment. He will spend three days reading, resting and playing the piano at an Opus Dei study center in Kenthurst, near Sydney.

The big welcome party will have to wait until Thursday. But expectations are high when Benedict XVI. with a symbolic harbor entrance to the 23rd anniversary of the Pope's birth. World Youth Day in the South Australian metropolis joins in. This is his second meeting after the one in Cologne in 2005, but it is the first one that was prepared during his term of office. These days, about 225.000 young people prepared for the meeting with their pope with a spiritual program. He himself, meanwhile, already named ies on the flight that will be discussed during his stay until 21. July should play a role. They point far beyond youth meeting. Here's how the pope plans to take an official stand in Australia on the sexual offenses committed by Catholic clergy against minors. Only three months earlier, he had expressed "deep shame" in the U.S. and met face to face with victims of abuse. Now, on his way there, he announced to journalists that he would say "essentially the same things as in America" on the subject – a bitter admission of how international the emergency is. "We will do everything possible for the victims to heal and reconcile," the pope said. At the same time, he said, the Church must ask itself self-critically what has been insufficient in its crisis management and in its priestly formation. In the moral ies concerned, Benedict XVI urges. on a clearer line than some ethicists have shown in the past: "There are things that are always bad, and pedophilia is always bad."

Climate change as a central theme Among young people, the pope wants to make ecology and climate change a central theme. When Benedict XVI. looking out of the window during the flight across the continent, he could see burning scrubland – consequences of a long drought. He, the intellectual and theologian, knows that the meeting of young Catholics under the motto "You will receive the power of the Holy Spirit" must not be content with spiritual navel-gazing. It is about a Pentecostal new beginning at the World Youth Day, "and consequently we therefore speak of our responsibility for creation". "We cannot create our climate ourselves," says Benedict XVI. He is convinced that with this insight will grow not only a new awareness of creation, but also of the Creator. "At this historical moment, we are beginning to realize that we need God."And that is why the pope says he is "optimistic" about the future of the church in society, optimistic despite the crisis facing religion in Australia as well as in Europe and even in once faith-firm North America. That erosion is also gnawing away at "terra australis," the "southern land of the Holy Spirit," the pope does not deny at all, even if he does not want to speak of a global decline of religion.

Messages on ecumenism and church crisis In percentage terms, Catholics still form the strongest community in Australia at 26 percent. That they have outstripped the Anglicans is simply because their faithful are dwindling even more massively. The pope was also asked about his relationship with the Anglican Church on his way to Sydney. Benedict XVI. refrained from commenting on homosexual ministers and women's episcopal ordinations – ies that are troubling the Anglican world communion enough themselves ahead of its Lambeth conference, which begins Wednesday. The conference must find solutions to its questions in responsibility before the present and in fidelity to the Gospel, he said. He is close to them in prayer, the pope said. What other messages on ecumenism and the church crisis, on the new evangelization and overcoming the shadows in the church's past he has in his luggage, his speeches from Thursday will show. In any case, he has already sharpened the attention before his discreet landing.

Vatican recognizes statutes of the community regnum christi

The Vatican has recognized two new statutes within the Catholic community Regnum Christi. Thus two branches within the community, the "consecrated women" and "consecrated men", are recognized under church law as "societies of apostolic life".

In addition, the Vatican approved the statutes of these two groups. As the community announced Thursday, at the recent General Assembly in Rome, the Archbishop of the Curia in charge, Jose Rodriguez Carballo, presented the relevant documents to.

Who is the community Regnum Christi?

According to its own information, the Regnum Christi community currently has a total of more than 1,000 members worldwide.500 Legionaries of Christ (priests, novices and religious), some 562 consecrated women and 63 consecrated men, and some 21.300 lay people. The new statutes are intended to prevent the re-emergence of a system of fraud and sexual abuse like that set up by the order's founder, Marcial Maciel Degollado (1920-2008).

Under the supervision of a papal assistant, four branches of the community have each drafted their own new statutes since 2013. The approval of the statutes of the entire Federation is still pending. After the double life of Degollado came to light in 2009 and subsequent inspection by the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI had. (2005-2013) replaced the entire religious leadership of the Legionaries of Christ.

What changes

In a homily, Archbishop Rodriguez, secretary of the Congregation for Religious, warned members of the community against any form of triumphalism. This does not correspond to the Gospel and to the Church, "which looks with shame at so many events that should never have happened".

The current canonical recognition also makes it possible for the consecrated laity, together with the religious community of the Legionaries of Christ, to form a federation in the Church, which the laity will then also join individually as members of the fourth branch in the Regnum Christi.

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