“The victim is our focus!”

adminonDecember 10, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

First of all, honesty, vigilance and the protection of the people entrusted to our care are the top priorities. In the last thirty years, medical and psychological knowledge about pathologically disturbed sexual inclinations has also improved significantly. Not only in the training of priests, but also in the training and continuing education of our church employees, questions of personality formation and the human integration of sexuality have long been a natural and also regular component. Abolishing celibacy, as some are now calling for, does not solve the problem! According to leading experts, there is no connection between pedophilia and celibacy. And it also completely misses the point of celibacy if you look at it solely from a sexual point of view. We need a responsible approach to the subject. In the seminary, not only a profound training is needed, but also a close examination of the candidates. But education for a strong personality also plays a central role in our schools and kindergartens. Because this is also part of prevention: children who can say no are stronger. We do everything possible to prevent such offenses from occurring.
At the turn of the year, we had already determined with Cardinal Meisner in the Spiritual Council that all priests, deacons, pastoral and parish workers would participate in information events on this topic. At ie here are the questions: what is abuse? How do perpetrators proceed? How do I behave when children tell of abuse? How to act as a pastor in children's and youth ministry? – To name just a few. Speaker is an experienced physician. Unfortunately, events have now caught up with our planning and shown how important they are so that good children's and youth work can continue to be done in our communities in the future and so that natural interaction with children and young people remains possible. In addition, the Bishops' Conference will take a close look at the 2002 guidelines to see what can be improved. Here in Cologne, we will also soon introduce an expert woman as our first point of contact, so that victims of abuse can choose whether they prefer to have their first conversation with a woman or a man.
Interview: Church newspaper for the archdiocese of Cologne

Following allegations of abuse against former Hildesheim Catholic Bishop Heinrich Maria Janssen (1907-1988), acting Bishop Norbert Trelle addressed all parishes in his diocese in a letter on Sunday.

"I am dismayed by the news of this abuse," Trelle stated in the letter. However, the diocese wants to continue its course of clearing up such allegations, he said.

"Five years ago, we decided to proceed with transparency and clarity in dealing with sexual abuse," the bishop writes. He feels obliged to this principle also in this case, in which his predecessor in office is accused.

Victim now 70 years old

"I consider this path the only correct and responsible one."The diocese of Hildesheim, in the eastern half of Lower Saxony, includes about 615.000 Catholic Christians.

The diocese had disclosed the suspicion against Janssen on Friday. The former bishop allegedly molested an altar boy from 1958 to 1963 who was 10 years old when the assaults began. The victim, now around 70 years old, had contacted the diocese in April after decades of silence.

Bishop Trelle's team of advisors on sexual abuse considers the man's accounts credible. "The suffering inflicted on the man, according to his testimony, fills me with deep sadness," Trelle explained. The diocese therefore paid on the recommendation of the Central Coordination Office of the German Bishops' Conference at the end of July 10.000 euros to the victim. According to the diocese, this is twice as much as is usually paid in abuse cases. Further payments, as the man had demanded, the diocese rejected according to its own information.

Disturbance

The popular Bishop Janssen led the diocese from 1957 to 1982. The alleged cases of abuse occurred shortly after the start of his tenure, according to the report. "Many of you will be shocked to hear this news," Trelle wrote to congregations. Above all those, which met the bishop still personally, "will feel disturbance and grief".

How the diocese intends to deal with the accusations against Janssen in the future, the diocese initially left open. The victim demands that Janssen's remains be removed from the bishop's crypt in the cathedral.

According to the diocese, a total of 38 allegations of sexual abuse have been reported against 23 priests since 2011. The cases date back to the 1940s.

Man prays with a rosary in his hand © Fabian Strauch

The regulation of a minimum area of 15 square meters per worshiper in Schleswig-Holstein meets with criticism from churches and politics. The implementation of this rule is impossible for small diaspora congregations, it is said.

This is what the head of the Catholic Office in Schleswig-Holstein, Beate Baumer, told the Catholic News Agency (KNA) in Kiel on Monday.

Some churches in North Frisia would thus come to a maximum attendance of less than 15 people for their services, from which the church employees such as priest, sexton and organist would still have to be deducted. That comes de facto a prohibition equal.

Church surprised by regulation

In Schleswig-Holstein, after a ban lasting several weeks, public religious services are permitted again as of this Monday, subject to compliance with area limitations and distance and hygiene regulations. Such a surface default was not topic in the preceding discussions with the federal state government, so Baumer further. The church was surprised by the regulation, he said, and will now seek dialogue again.

Schleswig's Protestant bishop Gothart Magaard hopes for a quick clarification. "Of course, we want to ensure a minimum distance between churchgoers," he told the "Flensburger Tageblatt" (Monday). The 15-square-meter rule, however, leads to the fact that "in many smaller churches a church service will only be possible to a very limited extent – if at all."

Improvements also demanded by the government factions. The CDU church politician Tobias von der Heide suggested reducing the prescribed minimum area to ten square meters per person or finding individual solutions. The spokesman for religious policy of the FDP parliamentary group, Jan Marcus Rossa, pleaded for simply applying the general distance rule of 1.5 meters instead of an area limit. When wearing a mouth-nose protection, the distances could possibly even be reduced.

Archdiocese of Hamburg prepares recommendation for action

The Catholic Archdiocese of Hamburg and the Protestant Northern Church had announced that they would again allow church services in their parishes starting next Sunday. The archdiocese wants to publish recommendations for action for its congregations this week. The Northern Church had already done so on Friday, in which it prescribed a minimum distance of two meters between attendees. After that, more than 20 participants could gather in an area of 100 square meters. At 15 square meters per participant would be 6.

Schleswig-Holstein is the only federal state to prescribe a minimum area of 15 square meters per worshiper. In Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania ten square meters per participant are to be applied. Other states, such as North Rhine-Westphalia, impose a guaranteed minimum distance between visitors of 1.5 meters

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