Wednesday, February 9, 2011

'Welt' Accuses Cardinal Marx of Covering up Abuse-- Archdiocese Threatens Lawsuit

Editor: as kreuz.net earlier reported, Regensburg Diocese has already sued 'Spiegel'.

A serious accusation: Cardinal Marx is said to have covered up a suspected sexual abuse, in order to use this "politically" -- The Archdiocese of Munich is taking legal steps.

Munich (kath.net) "Cardinal Marx covers suspected abuse". With this headline on late Wednesday afternoon the newspaper "Die Welt" has aroused the concern of the Archdiocese of Munich. "There was an impression that Marx himself was the one who was aware of the abuse at first. Actually, he held back the information of a suspicion of sexual abuse, in order to use it later for political reasons.", wrote the paper. It is maintained in a report that the Munich Archbishop Cardinal Reinhard Marx, according to information from "Welt Online", is suspected of allegedly covering up an abuse for over three months and through that he could allegedly permit a man exposed as a pedophile to continue working as an educator at Cloister Ettal.

The "Welt" declared that it should have been the case that the victim of the educator who had informed the Diocese at first on 5. April 2010 was brought to the attention of the abuse delegate of the Archdiocese. Supposedly this was reported three months later to the State Prosecutor of Munich. The Cloister in Ettal, where the educator was active, should have been the first to have been informed, actually.

According to information from "Welt Online" Archbishop Marx is supposed to have been personally aware of the accusations against the Ettal teacher. Corresponding guidelines of the German Bishops Conference for the handling of sexual abuse require that the abuse delegate is "immediately" informed over these events. Otherwise the suspected victim according to "Welt" is supposed to have spoken later to Marx personally.

The paper reported that there was a conflict in the background between the Archdiocese of Munich and Cloister Ettal. In February 2010 Archbishop Marx had demanded the resignation of the then Abbott and the director of the Ettal Dormitory, both of whom were later rehabilitated by the Pope. The Diocese then directed, according to "Welt", the suspicion against the Ettal Educator to after a month of inactivity in the same week in which the rehabilitation of the Ettal Abbott was made public. "Possibly, these recent negative allegations could draw a cloud over the positive media-echo for Ettal", writes Welt.

The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising has condemend the report from "Welt" as untrue. "The "Welt" is called to retract and omit the untrue and damaging information. We plan on taking legal steps to obtain retraction and omission." they said in an official statement.

From kath.net...

No comments: