New Accusations Against Cardinal Mixa

Last month, the German Cardinal Mixa resigned, after admissions that he had (physically) assaulted schoolchildren in his care some decades ago. Now there are allegations that the abuse goes further: German police are investigating charges that he was also guilty of sexual assaults on minors.

Sydney Morning Herald:
 

Leading bishop accused of abuse  

GERMANY'S Catholic Church is in turmoil after prosecutors said they were investigating paedophilia claims against a leading bishop who had offered his resignation after admitting beating orphans.

Prosecutors in the southern city of Augsburg said they had opened a preliminary probe into Walter Mixa after he was accused of sexually abusing a boy while bishop of Eichstaett between 1996 and 2005. Bishop Mixa has rejected the accusations.

The diocese of Augsburg said it had alerted prosecutors to the accusations in line with new German Bishops' Conference guidelines.

Arizona: How Canon Law Protected Convicted Abusers

A report from Arizona tells how the late Tucson Bishop manual D Moreno struggled to get authorization from then Cardinal Ratzinger at the CDF to defrock a convicted abusive priest. 

The late Bishop Manuel D. Moreno pleaded with the future pope for help.

In one case, Moreno pleaded with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for help in removing the Rev. Michael Teta, who was convicted by the church in 1997 of five crimes including sexual solicitation in the confessional.

"I make this plea to you to assist me in every way you can to expedite this case, because the accused was a priest in whom I had great confidence at one time, but who, unfortunately, worked among our former seminarians, and, terrible to say, evidently corrupted many of them," Moreno wrote in an April 1997 letter to Ratzinger.

The report as published presents yet another case where Pope Benedict, as head of the CDF, was clearly involved in dealing with a clear case of abuse by a convicted priest, but did no intervene to remove him from presenting a continuing danger to children, in spite of pleading and warnings of future abuse from the local ordinary.

How Many German Abuse Victims? Hotline Crashes After 4400 calls.

Lest anybody be in any doubt that the scale of the abuse problem in Germany compares with that in the US or in Ireland, here is a sobering statistic:  teh hotline set up to take calls from abuse survivors, crashed on its first day in operation, after taking over 4400 calls:

Abuse hotline crashes as 'humiliated' church prays for a new start

AN ABUSE hotline set up by the Catholic Church in Germany crashed on its first day as more than 4400 alleged victims of paedophile and violent priests called to seek counselling and advice.
The handful of therapists assigned to deal with them could not cope with the numbers - only 162 of 4459 callers were given advice before the system was closed.
Andreas Zimmer, the head of the project in the Bishopric of Trier, said he was not prepared for ''that kind of an onslaught''.
The hotline is the church's attempt to win back trustfollowing an escalating abuse scandal that threatens the papacy of German-born Pope Benedict.

....

On the same day as the German hotline opened allegations emerged of serial abuse perpetrated against children by Bishop Walter Mixa - an ally and friend of the Pope - when he was overseeing a Catholic children's home in the 1970s.

The leader of Germany's Catholic bishops said in a Good Friday message that he hoped Christianity's most solemn day would mark a ''new start'' for the church. Archbishop Robert Zollitsch said the time when Christians commemorated the crucifixion of Christ must ''mark a new departure, which we so badly need''.

(Full report from Sydney Mornign Herald)