Pope German Visit: Religious Leader Talks With Sex Abuse Victims

Pope German Visit: Religious Leader Talks With Sex Abuse Victims

ERFURT, Germany — Pope Benedict XVI met with German victims of sexual abuse by priests and expressed “deep compassion and regret” at the suffering of those abused by members of the clergy, the Vatican said Friday….

Germany’s Catholic church has seen the numbers of faithful leaving the congregation jump, after hundreds of people came forward last year with stories of having been physically or sexually abused by members of the clergy. Church leaders had expressed hope that Benedict’s visit could help heal wounds left by the scandal.

Benedict has been accused by victims groups and their lawyers of being part of systematic practice of cover-up by church hierarchy for pedophile priests, in his earlier roles as an archbishop in Germany and later at the helm of the Vatican morals office….

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/23/pope-german-visit-sex-abuse_n_978265.html

Child Sex Abuse Bill Dies, Archbishop Caught in Catholic Abuse Scandal

Shanley clergy abuse recovered memory case

For 5th Year, Child Sex Abuse Bill Dies in Legislature By PAUL VITELLO June 2, 2010
For four years, advocates for sexually abused children had fought a battle in the New York Legislature to open a legal window that would allow victims to file lawsuits against predators long after the statute of limitations had expired.

Though the bill died each year, it passed in the Assembly three timesand earned the support of two governors. And the renewed attention to sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church augured well for the cause this year….Dennis Poust, the communications director of the New York State Catholic Conference, said the vote represented an emerging consensus that time limits on legal liability were an important civil rights protection.

The conference is the policy arm of the state’s Catholic bishops, the bill’s most formidable opponents….Since it was first introduced in the 2006-7 session, the Child Victims Act has been fervently opposed by the Catholic Church and several Orthodox Jewish groups, which saw potentially devastating financial implications in opening an opportunity for victims, regardless of age, to bring lawsuits for sexual abuse suffered in
childhood. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/nyregion/03abuse.html

German Archbishop Caught up in Catholic Abuse Scandal By Tristana Moore / Berlin  Jun. 03, 2010 Already reeling from a series of sexual abuse accusations, Germany’s Catholic Church has taken another hit, and this time the scandal has reached into the upper echelons of the organization. On Monday, German prosecutors confirmed that they’ve launched a preliminary criminal investigation into allegations that the head of Germany’s Catholic Church, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, was an accessory to the sexual assault of children.

The case threatens to further deepen a crisis that has already tainted the image of the Catholic Church in Germany, not least because, as head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Zollitsch is tasked with dealing with the sex abuse scandal. Prosecutors say that in 1987, Zollitsch re-appointed a priest who was facing abuse allegations to work in a monastery in Birnau, in southern Germany by Lake Constance. “According to the complaint filed by a man at the end of May, Archbishop Zollitsch assigned further work to a priest … despite knowing that this priest had sexually abused children in the past,” Wolfgang Maier, the senior public prosecutor in the south German city of Freiburg, tells TIME.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1993737,00.html?artId=1993737

German Church Faces Child Abuse Charges

German Church Faces Child Abuse Charges

By NICHOLAS KULISH February 9, 2010 BERLIN

Shanley recovered memory case : S.M.A.R.T.’s Ritual Abuse Pages

The Roman Catholic Church faces yet another child abuse scandal, this time in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany. The widening public scandal began last month with allegations that three priests at the elite Canisius Jesuit high school in Berlin had sexually abused students in the 1970s and ’80s. In the midst of a steadily growing uproar over the handling of that case, the German magazine Der Spiegel published an article last weekend that said nearly 100 clerics and laypeople had been suspected of abusing children and teenagers nationwide since 1995….

The abuse of children by members of the clergy remains one of the most difficult issues for the church. In December the Vatican accepted the resignations of several Irish bishops after a report by the Irish government detailed the physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children by Catholic priests in church-run residential schools, many of them run by the Christian Brothers.

The report found that both the Catholic hierarchy and Irish state agencies covered up complaints by 320 Irish children who said they were abused by priests between 1974 and 2004.

On Monday at the Vatican, Benedict told members of the Pontifical Council for the Family that he condemned the abuse of children by members of the clergy, but he has not commented directly on the situation in Germany.

Der Spiegel said that at least 94 clerics and laypeople had been suspected of abuse since 1995, based on a poll of 27 of Germany’s 30 Catholic dioceses.

Irish Victims Write to Pope

DUBLIN (AP) – Irish victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy have written to Pope Benedict XVI asking him to take responsibility for the church’s concealment of child molestation by forcing out bishops implicated in the decades of cover-up.

Their plea comes one week before a special Vatican summit meeting involving the pope and Ireland’s bishops to prepare a response to scandals in the Irish church. Three bishops have already offered to resign. The letter’s writers urge Benedict to write to all the people of Ireland, “accepting fully the harm that has been caused” by child-abusing priests, nuns and brothers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/world/europe/10germany.html