One cardinal The Catholic Church vowed on Thursday to learn from a report that detailed hundreds of cases of sexual abuse over the past 75 years in his German archdiocese, and which highlighted that the Church had been a place of sadness and fear for many.
THE cardinal Reinhard Marx, the archbishop of Munich and Freising, responded to a report by a law firm published last week on sexual abuse in the archdiocese, which includes criticism of how some cases were handled by him and former Pope Benedict XVI.
“There was a dark side (of the Church) that came to light in recent years. That dark side is considered in an honest and down-to-earth look at the Church today,” Marx told a news conference.
“For many people the Church was a place of sadness, a place of fear,” said Marx, a progressive leader within the Church.
The report published last week by the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) office on the period between 1945 and 2019, commissioned by the Archdiocese of Munich, was the latest chapter in a sexual abuse crisis that has shaken the Catholic Church in Germany and other countries in last years.
The document revealed 497 victims of abuse, most of them male, but added that the number was likely higher, and named 235 alleged abusers, including 173 priests.
The office accuses Marx of misconduct in responding to two suspected abuse cases and also criticizes Benedict for failing to act in four cases when he was Archbishop of Munich. The former pope denied wrongdoing.
Reference: CNN Brasil
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