“Stable, capable of action and safe from state influence”

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German Protestant Kirchentag – Young people show their scarf with the Kirchentag motto © Bernd Thissen

Representatives of the Evangelical Church in Germany commemorated the founding of the regional church union 75 years ago. At the same time, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, chairman of the EKD council, raised awareness for the tasks of the future.

"I think with gratitude of the people who laid the foundation stone for the Evangelical Church in Germany 75 years ago today," said EKD Council President Heinrich Bedford-Strohm. "After the failure of the church under National Socialism, they wanted to conclude a federation of churches that would be stable, capable of acting, and safe from state influence."

The Bavarian bishop described the decision to put individual denominational and state church interests at the back of the queue as forward-looking. "The fact that the Protestant Church in Germany is recognizable in public is important, especially in an increasingly pluralistic society."This also requires the institutional framework that was created in 1945. According to Synod President Irmgard Schwaetzer, the founding of the EKD was marked by the diversity of lived faith.

Equality and diversity

Today, she said, diversity is visible not least in the equal participation of women in the pastorate and in leadership positions. "After the war, men still dominated in our church, too," Schwaetzer says. "Meanwhile, a characteristic of the Protestant Church is that in it – unlike in many other religious communities – the sexes are equal," said the synod president, adding, "Diversity will also make up the future of the church with a stronger community spirit."

Bedford-Strohm and Schwaetzer made their remarks on the sidelines of a meeting with former synod presides and council members in Berlin. The EKD, as an association of Lutheran, Reformed and Uniate regional churches, was named as the "Church of the Future" at a meeting of Protestant church leaders on 27. to 31. Founded August 1945 in Treysa, Hesse. The Church Conference constituted the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany and determined its personnel composition.

The then Wurttemberg state bishop Theophil Wurm (1868-1953) was elected as the first council chairman. The Protestant Relief Organization, which was merged with the Inner Mission in 1957 to form the Diakonisches Werk of the EKD, was also founded by the church conference in Treysa.

In three months, Hutu extremists in Rwanda in 1994 had killed more than 800.000 members of the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutu murdered. Rwanda trials to end in exactly one year, at the end of 2011. But 20 criminal cases still underway against alleged masterminds of genocide. The court is running out of time

Sir Dennis Byron is a polite gentleman from the Caribbean who likes to make a joke sometimes. The judge, who was born in 1943, uses appearances before international audiences to make flaming appeals: "Use your police, make arrests," says then the jurist from the island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. Byron is president of the Rwanda Tribunal, which brings to justice those responsible for the 1994 genocide. He's worried: The court in Arusha, Tanzania, is running out of time.

Ten of those charged in Arusha are still fugitives. Among them is former Rwandan defense minister Augustin Bizimana. The businessman Felicien Kabuga, who is said to have financed the genocide and is apparently in Kenya, where he enjoys protection, is also among them.

The mandate of the court, which was established in 1994 and costs the United Nations about $120 million a year, has been extended several times. When all first-instance trials are over at the end of 2011, the UN Security Council will allow two more years for appeal proceedings. "We are scaling down our activities, although our workload is extremely high at the moment," Byron says.

Skeptical human rights organizations
Skepticism grows among human rights organizations. "We are concerned about how quickly the pending cases are to be rushed through," says Leonie von Braun, international criminal law expert at Amnesty International. "If work is not done cleanly, it can play into the hands of the defendants."In the end, guilty parties would have to be acquitted.

The tribunal in Arusha filed 92 charges and handed down 53 verdicts so far: 45 defendants were sentenced to prison, eight acquitted. Under time constraints, judges try to transfer cases to several countries. France took over two cases. Three trials to possibly be taken over by Rwanda, although the judiciary there is accused of partiality.

Among them is the case of priest Jean Bosco Uwinkindi, who was arrested in Uganda in July. The indictment reads like a book of horror. The pastor of a Pentecostal church near Kigali was known in 1994 as a partisan of Hutu extremists who preached hatred against the Tutsi minority. He is alleged to have led hit squads that killed people seeking protection and pursued them into the swamps. "In July 1994, when Pastor Uwinkindi left Rwanda, nearly 2.000 bodies were found in the vicinity of his former Kayenzi church," the indictment says.

Historic and the view to Germany
There are far more suspects than Arusha could ever try. Tribunal president Byron is looking to Germany as a result. The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court will soon decide whether to open a trial against Onesphore Rwabukombe. The former mayor of the northern Rwandan municipality of Muvumba is accused of participating in several pogroms. He had been arrested in July in the Rhine-Main area.

The Runda Tribunal has achieved something historic: On 2. September 1998 ied the first genocide verdict in an international court in Arusha. The case of Jean Paul Akayesu, former mayor of the Rwandan city of Taba, also marked the first time that rape was considered a genocidal crime. "Sexual violence was a step in the process of extermination of the Tutsi group," judges found. It was a matter of "destroying the spirit, the will to live and life itself".

Chief judge Byron does not let up even in the final phase of the tribunal. He urges arrest of wanted suspected war criminals, even if his tribunal can no longer conduct trials but would have to hand over indictments to other courts. His concern is that "the perpetrators of Rwanda will escape punishment.

Teachers at Berlin's Canisius College sexually abused students on a large scale in the 1970s and '80s. The current rector of the Jesuit high school, Father Klaus Mertes, therefore addressed a letter to about 600 students of the affected grades. The Catholic News Agency (KNA) documents the letter published on Thursday essentially unabridged.

"Dear former students, In recent years, several of you have contacted me to acknowledge that you were victims of sexual abuse by individual Jesuits at Canisius College. The trail of abuse stretches through the 1970s and into the 1980s. It is with deep shock and shame that I have taken note of these appalling, not only isolated, but systematic attacks that have lasted for years. It is also part of the experience of the victims that in the Canisius College and in the Order there was a looking away by those who actually would have had a duty to protect the victims concerned. For this reason alone, the abuses concern not only the perpetrators and victims, but the entire college, both the school and the associational youth work. For the same reason, I hereby first apologize on behalf of the College to all affected former Canisians for what was done to them at the College. In talking to some of the victims, I have come to understand better the deep wounds that sexual abuse leaves in the lives of young people, and how a person's whole biography can be darkened and damaged for decades as a result of it. At the same time, I heard from the victims how liberating it is to begin to talk about their experiences, even if they happened a long time ago. There are wounds that time does not heal. On behalf of the college, I would like to point out that in 2007 the order established a commissioner's office to which victims of abuse by Jesuits and employees of Jesuit institutions can turn: Ms. Ursula Raue, attorney and mediator, (…) was for many years president of the German section of "Innocence in Danger," an international organization dedicated to combating child abuse on the Internet. She is the contact person not only for possible current suspicions and reports of victims. She is also the point of contact for victims of abuse from longer ago if they wish to reestablish contact with the Order or with the College. She is authorized and obligated to approach the order with victims and mediate. She cooperates in the confrontation of the perpetrators. Any information it receives will be shared with others only with the explicit consent of the victims. I respect, of course, when those affected have made the decision for themselves to break with the college, with the order, and with the Catholic Church as a result of their experiences. On the other hand, I do not want to omit the signal to those who seek contact with the College and the Order that we are approachable. In doing so, Ms. Raue is an opportunity for address. You may, of course, contact any other person you trust who has dealings with the Order and the College. Within the Jesuit Order in Germany P. Provincial informed some time ago that there have been undoubted cases of abuse of young people of both sexes by individual Jesuits in the past. This information has caused great consternation among the confreres. In addition to feeling shame and shock at the magnitude of the abuse in each case and in the accumulation – visible so far – we, on the part of the College, must ask ourselves how we can avoid becoming complicit again today by looking the other way. Looking away often already happens in the moment when one decides not to want to know, although one feels that one should actually look more closely. This is a challenge to the personal moral courage of each individual as well as to the scrutiny of structures. At the same time, the question arises as to which structures at schools, in the youth work of associations and also in the Catholic Church are conducive to abuses happening and de facto being covered up. Here we encounter problems such as lack of complaint structures, lack of protection of trust, encroaching pedagogy, encroaching pastoral care, inability to self-criticism, taboos and obsessions in church sexual pedagogy, inappropriate handling of power, dependency relationships. We have been working on these ies in recent years, both in the Order and at the College, and will continue to do so. In this sense, I thank the victims who, by their courage to speak out, also do a service to the College and the Order by raising these ies. On the part of the College, I would like to contribute through this letter to breaking the silence, so that the individuals and cohorts affected can speak to each other. In deep shock and shame, I repeat at the same time my apology to all victims of abuse by Jesuits at Canisius College."

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