Third affidavit: Woelki cannot remember the list of perpetrators

In the case of the abuse allegations against the ex-Sternsinger president, an Excel list gets the controversial Cologne cardinal in trouble. The 2015 document is said to refute his previous statements. Woelki, on the other hand, cannot remember whether he even looked at them.

Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki from Cologne has confirmed that he only learned of the allegations of abuse against former Sternsinger President Winfried Pilz at the end of June 2022. A spokesman for the Archdiocese said that Woelki had given another affidavit in a press law procedure that was currently underway.

It is about a list of perpetrators that the former assistant to the head of human resources in the archdiocese, Hildegard Dahm, claims to have created for Woelki in early 2015. Among the 14 names listed is said to have been that of Pilz. In an interview with the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” in November, Dahm said that her boss took the Excel list with her to a conversation with Woelki. Afterwards she asked her boss what Woelki had said about the list. He replied: “The cardinal wasn’t interested in that at all.” She was then “petrified”. After the interview, the Cologne public prosecutor’s office initiated investigations against Woelki on suspicion of false affidavit.

In what is now the third insurance submitted, Woelki states that he cannot remember the list in question. “I can’t remember that I received this list, that I took note of this list, i.e. looked at it,” Woelki now writes according to the “Kölner Stadt Anzeiger”. So he couldn’t remember seeing the name Pilz there either.

The Cologne public prosecutor’s office is also investigating Woelki for making false statements. This is about Woelki’s knowledge of a priest suspected of abuse, whom he promoted in 2017. A hearing before the district court of Cologne in this matter was canceled last week due to the illness of a judge.

There are allegations of abuse against the mushroom, who died in 2019. In a press law procedure, Woelki had assured that the case was only dealt with from the fourth week of June this year.