The report on abuse in the archdiocese of Freiburg has led to calls for Church legal action against Archbishop Robert Zollitsch as the investigation revealed latent criminal behaviour by the former president of the German Bishops’ Conference, also towards state authorities. Victims are outraged at the behaviour of the man who had professed his commitment to investigating abuse. A well-known canon lawyer expects him to be punished.
An abuse report in the southwestern German archdiocese of Freiburg has revealed appalling misconduct by former archbishops. The reappraisal commission of the archdiocese of Freiburg concluded that there were at least 540 victims of abuse – mainly underage girls and boys – and more than 250 priests who have been proven guilty or accused of abuse in the period from the 1950s to the present day.
“And we have to be clear that there is probably an even larger dark area because many of victims still haven’t come forward,” said the chairman of the commission, the Freiburg theologian Magnus Striet.
The 600-page study documents serious misconduct, especially among the former archbishops Oskar Saier (1978-2002) and Robert Zollitsch (2003-2013). The current archbishop, Stephan Burger, was completely exonerated by the report and has not been accused of any misconduct.
One explosive aspect is that the 84-year-old Zollitsch was president of the German Bishops’ Conference from 2008 to 2014 and in this function, together with the Conference secretary Hans Langendoerfer SJ, promised a “full investigation and full transparency” when the abuse scandal broke in 2010.
However, Zollitsch himself did not even adhere to the internal Church rules and omitted the obligatory reporting of abuse cases to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Zollitsch, who was influenced by the Schoenstatt Movement founded by Father Joseph Kentenich, announced that he did not want to comment for the time being.
Matthias Katsch, the spokesman for the victims’ group Eckiger Tisch (Non-Round Table), said Zollitsch had committed serious offences in dealing with abuse. He had shown a high level of criminal energy in covering up crimes committed by his priests against hundreds of children and young people over decades and keeping them hidden from justice, said Katsch. “He bent the law, both secular and church. He lied. But it will no longer be possible to hold him accountable for it. This is a dark day for the rule of law.”
Canon lawyer Thomas Schueller also expressed shock and said he was alarmed at “the complete ignorance of Zollitsch, who as one of the longest-serving heads of personnel covered up the worst cases of abuse and protected perpetrators”.
It was shameful to see how Zollitsch had shielded perpetrators of abuse “while bringing the full force of Church law to bear against priests in consensual relationships with adult women”, Schueller told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) publishing group on Wednesday. He said he found such “coldness of heart” shocking.
By contrast, Schueller praised the actions of Zollitsch’s successor Burger, who announced that he had reported his predecessor to the Vatican. “The fact that Burger resolutely reported his predecessor to Rome has a new quality.” It was a case “in which the Vatican could deprive Zollitsch of his episcopal rights”. It was unclear, however, whether Rome would apply its own canon law.
Schueller said that in light of Zollitsch’s long and serious disregard for canon law, he could imagine Rome prohibiting him from publicly exercising his rights arising from the episcopate or from making public appearances.
Originally reported by KNA Germany.
