The Munich abuse report has shaken the Catholic Church in Germany – with dramatic consequences and a drastic negative record.
Munich (dpa / lby) – According to the abuse report by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, the Bavarian state capital reports a record number of church exits. “We had more church exits than ever before,” said the spokesman for the district administration department in Munich, Johannes Mayer, when asked by the German Press Agency. Between January 1 and June 22 of this year, 14,035 people left the church in Munich. In the same period of 2021 there were 10,472 and in 2019 with 7556 significantly fewer. Mayer called the number 5538 from the first six months in the first Corona year 2020 difficult to compare because of the lockdown.
On January 20, the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) presented an expert opinion on behalf of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. The experts assume at least 497 victims and 235 alleged perpetrators, but at the same time from a significantly higher number of unreported cases – and from the fact that Munich archbishops – including the later Pope Benedict XVI. – had behaved incorrectly in dealing with it.
Just this week it became known that a declaratory action by a victim of abuse against Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, against the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising and the former Archbishop Cardinal Friedrich Wetter is pending at the district court in Traunstein.
With regard to Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict, the complaint states that as a cardinal he “was aware of all the circumstances” and “at least accepted the fact that this priest was a repeat offender”. A declaratory action is not associated with criminal prosecution, but guilt may be established.
Not only in Munich are the members leaving the church in droves: In Regensburg, the city where Ratzinger lived and taught and where his brother Georg also lived until the end, the number of people leaving rose to 2073 – compared to 1239 in the same period last year. In Augsburg there were 2068 exits compared to 1406 in the same period of 2021, Ingolstadt counted 1260 exits (comparable period 2021: 699).
The German Catholic Bishops’ Conference (DBK) is expected to publish the number of people leaving the church in Germany for 2021 this Monday. However, the figures in question do not yet reflect the effects of the abuse report from this January, but only relate to the period from January to December 2021.